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THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

NEW YORK 



THINGS FUNDAMENTAL 



A COURSE OF THIRTEEN DISCOURSES 
IN MODERN APOLOGETICS 



BY 



CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON 

PASTOR OF BROADWAY TABERNACLE 
NEW YORK CITY 



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NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



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THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Receive** 

SEP 22 1903 

Copyright Entry 

CLASS A~ XXc. No 

COPY B. 



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til _ I ! 

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t I t ' 



Copyright, 1903, 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

Published September, 1903. 



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TO THE CONGREGATION 

WHOSE EARNEST AND STEADFAST ATTENTION 

KINDLED THE PREACHER'S HEART 

AND TONGUE 

Wtjix Uolume is ^ffecttonateig Enscrifoefc 



CONTENTS 
i 

PAGE 

The Nature and Place of Faith in the Christian Life . I 
January u, 1903. 

II 

The Nature and Place of Reason in the Christian Life . 27 
January 18, 1903. 

Ill 

The Cause of the Present Uneasiness in the Christian 

Church » . . 53 

January 25, 1903. 

IV 

How the Old Conception of the Scriptures differs from 

the New. (Part I) 77 

February 8, 1903. 



How the Old Conception of the Scriptures differs from 

the New. (Part II) .103 

February 15, 1903. 

vii 



• * - — 



viii CONTENTS 

VI 

PAGE 

The Deity of Jesus. (Part I) 141 

March 1, 1903. 

VII 

The Deity of Jesus. (Part II) 163 

March 8, 1903. 

VIII 

The Miracles 191 

March 15, 1903. 

IX 

Sin, and its Forgiveness 223 

March 22, 1903. 

X 

Sin, and its Punishment 249 

March 29, 1903. 

XI 

The Church of the Living God . • • • . 283 
April 5, 1903. 

XII 

The Immortality of the Soul 315 

Easter, April 12, 1903. 

XIII 
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit . . . 343 
April 26, 1903. 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF 
FAITH IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 



-*■--■ - — 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 
IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

11 Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction 
of things not seen." — Heb. xi : i. 

We are living in an age of mental confusion. 
The world everywhere is torn up. There have 
been so many surprising discoveries, and so many 
startling inventions, and so many new combi- 
nations within the last fifty years, that we are all 
at sea. There are so many novel hypotheses and 
so many interpretations, there are so many books 
and so many voices giving directions which con- 
tradict one another, that the minds of many are 
hopelessly bewildered. This mental confusion is 
everywhere. It is impossible that the Christian 
church should escape it. The impression has 
gone abroad that Christianity is not what it used 
to be ; that the Bible is not the book it was when 
we were young; that the old doctrines have been 
if not discredited at least seriously modified ; that 
Jesus of Nazareth must be looked at from a differ- 
ent viewpoint ; and that the Christian church is not 

3 



4 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

worthy of the veneration which was given to it 
by the fathers. This is the vague and general 
impression, and the average man has no time to 
find out whether the impression has good foun- 
dations or not. For we are living in one of the 
busiest of all ages. Men are obliged to work 
almost with desperation, and when their day's 
work is over it is necessary for them to play that 
they may keep the physical machine in working 
order. The busy physician bewails the fact that 
he gets almost no time to read, being scarcely 
able to keep up with his professional reading. 
The hurried lawyer sighs because he has so little 
time with his books. I heard a college president 
lamenting, not long ago, that he had scarcely any 
time to read. So crowded is our modern life, that 
the average man or woman is unable to pursue 
any systematic course of serious study. The 
result of it all is that there is a widespread igno- 
rance of the foundations of our Christian faith, and 
the question arises, Where are people going to 
find the instruction which they need ? 

They cannot go to the daily papers, for the 
papers are gotten up in a hurry, and it is not their 
function to impart Christian doctrine to the world. 
Moreover, many papers are in the hands of men 
who are either indifferent to Christianity or hostile 
to it altogether; and whatever is said about the 
church in their columns is written, for the most 
part, by young and inexperienced reporters who 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 5 

see Christianity simply from the outside, and know 
nothing of its fundamental doctrines. Shall we 
go to the novelist for this information ? No. 
There is not a great novelist now writing who is 
a safe or satisfactory interpreter of the Christian 
faith. Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Marie Corelli, 
and Mr. Hall Caine have produced what are called 
religious novels, but neither of these three writers 
is competent to interpret Christianity to this gener- 
ation. Shall we go, then, to the theological pro- 
fessors ? No. They are immersed in the work 
of the class room ; and the seminary and the 
people cannot easily be brought together. 

If anybody is to interpret Christianity to the 
men and women of to-day, it must be the preacher ; 
but even he is often tempted to feel that he has 
no time to do this foundation and all-important 
work. There are so many urgent duties to be 
pressed home upon the consciences of men, 
there are so many practical truths which need 
to be unfolded and illustrated, there are so many 
deserving enterprises to be held up and com- 
mended, that the average preacher seldom ventures 
to deal with those processes by means of which 
his own faith has been built up, and very rarely 
considers with his congregation the deep foun- 
dation stones on which the whole superstructure 
of the Christian church is built. Moreover, every 
preacher knows that in his congregation there are 
many persons who do not want a lecture on the- 



6 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

ology. They come to church, worn and weary, 
and they want something which appeals to and 
satisfies the heart. A woman in high position said 
to me not long ago : " When I go to church I do 
not want to think. I get enough thinking to do 
through the week, and when I go to church I want 
to rest. All I want is some good music and a 
chance to be soothed by the atmosphere of the 
place of prayer." This woman in these words 
speaks for many. The minister who deals seri- 
ously with the great themes of Christian thought 
knows that many in his congregation will grow 
drowsy or impatient, and that some of them will 
go away feeling they have not received that imme- 
diate uplift which they need to carry them through 
the duties of another week. But there are others 
who crave and long for fuller instruction on the 
problems and mysteries of our Faith, and so I 
have decided to devote the Sunday mornings of a 
quarter of this year to the consideration of these 
lofty and difficult themes. 

In my walking up and down the world I have 
found seven men : — 

The first man is confused. He does not know 
what to think about religious matters. He has 
heard that there has been recent light from the 
monuments, but he does not know what the light 
is. He has seen in a head-line in some paper that 
something has been dug up somewhere, but he 
does not know where or what. He has heard that 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH J 

there has been commotion in a Theological Semi- 
nary, but just what caused the commotion he does 
not know. He has read in a paper that a certain 
creed has been modified, but just why or to what 
extent he has not been able to ascertain. He has 
noticed in the paper that Dr. Blank has given up 
belief in a certain section of the creed. But the 
reason for all this he is not able to discover. He 
was brought up in a Christian household and has 
been standing on the outskirts of the Christian 
crowd, and he knows that something is going on 
at the centre, but just what it is he does not know. 
The second man is a man with suspended judg- 
ment. He believes that there are two sides to 
every question, and that it is a man's business to 
consider carefully both sides. He knows there 
are arguments for Christianity and arguments 
against it, and he wants to consider both sets of 
arguments impartially. He sits down with a pair 
of scales in front of him and throws into one pan 
the arguments for Christianity and into the other 
pan the arguments against Christianity, and every 
man who has anything to say either for or against 
is certain to catch his ear, for it gives him a chance 
to put something else in one or the other pan of 
the scales. If you ask him to become a Christian, 
his reply is, " I want to think about it. There are 
two sides, you know." I have often marvelled at 
this man, for I have seen him when his hair had 
grown gray and with great furrows in his cheeks 



8 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

chiselled by the years, and even with the shadow of 
death falling across his face, I have heard him say- 
ing, " There are two sides, you know." 

The third man is the agnostic. He is the man 
who does not know and who is convinced that he 
cannot know. Religious matters are beyond him. 
They are beyond everybody. Such themes as God, 
and the soul, and immortality are not profitable. 
We cannot reach certainty in regard to any of 
these matters, and therefore it is the part of wis- 
dom to give one's time and thought to other things. 
There are only two things of which the agnostic 
is absolutely certain. The first is that he cannot 
know anything religiously, and that you cannot 
know anything either. 

The fourth man is the man who has been made 
a sceptic, as he thinks, by science. He is not a 
scientist himself, but has a smattering of what 
sundry scientists have written, and so far as he 
can see, Christianity and science are opposed to 
each other, and science has driven Christianity 
from the field. The Bible has been completely 
discredited, he thinks, by scientific discoveries, and 
the Christian church is a defunct institution. The 
Bible says that the world is six thousand years old 
— science says it is older. The Bible says the 
world was made in six days — science says it was 
not. The Bible says that on a certain occasion the 
sun stood still — science knows that it did not. 
The Bible says that the whale swallowed Jonah — 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 9 

science says it could not. Therefore all the mira- 
cles of the Old Testament are so many myths, and 
the miracles of the New Testament are accretions 
of beautiful legends which have gathered around 
the life of a very good man who once lived in 
Galilee. 

The fifth man is the man who has been made an 
eclectic by the study of literature. This man has 
not studied the Bible, but he has read a little poetry 
and a little philosophy, and has dipped a little into 
the science of comparative religion. He has gone 
just deep enough into Buddhism and Confucianism 
to know that there are some good things in those 
religions, and he has not gone deep enough to 
know how many bad things there are in them. 
This man is very cosmopolitan in his views and 
aspirations. He would not be so narrow as to be 
a Christian and pin his faith to the sleeve of any 
one religion. He believes in the good wherever it 
may be found. He would not accept any par- 
ticular creed, but would take all creeds so far as 
they commend themselves to his good judgment. 
Tennyson has given us a portrait of this man in 
his "Palace of Art" : — 

" I take possession of man's mind and deed ; 
I care not what the sects may brawl ; 
I sit as God holding no form of creed, 
But contemplating all." 

I have often met that man. 

The sixth man is exceedingly humble, so humble 



10 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

that he is unwilling to become a Christian. He 
knows that Christianity is a big subject, and he 
knows also that he is busy and that his intellectual 
faculties are limited. He has neither the time nor 
the ability to investigate such a myriad-sided sub- 
ject, and therefore he has convinced himself that 
he has no right to believe. "What right," he 
says, "has a man to say he believes in a thing 
which he has neither the time nor the disposition 
to investigate ? " This man of humility is one of 
the most plausible of all men now alive. 

The seventh man is a man whose heart is timid. 
He lives in a state of chronic alarm. He is afraid 
of the higher criticism, of the new theology, and of 
the new psychology, and of German philosophy, 
and of French speculation, and of scientific inves- 
tigation, for he does not want the Ark of the Lord 
to be upset. He puts on a brave face, but in his 
heart he is afraid of thorough investigation, think- 
ing that possibly if we only thought deeply enough, 
we might discover that some of the things we be- 
lieve are not true. This would be quite disastrous 
to the church, because it would unsettle the minds 
of the young. This man thinks we had better let 
well enough alone and not bother ourselves by 
efforts to probe too deeply. He is a believer him- 
self, so he thinks, he accepts all the doctrines, he 
is a member of the church — but why he believes 
the things which the church stands for, he does 
not know. He does not know why he believes in 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH II 

the existence of God, or in the deity of Christ, or 
in the forgiveness of sins, or in the immortality of 
the soul. He is not able to give a reason for the 
hope that is in him. In the presence of the first 
six men who are always talking about their unbelief 
and giving good reasons for it, this man is silent. 
He is a Christian, but he is not well enough posted 
to defend himself when he meets men who are not 
Christians. It is to this man that I want to preach 
on the coming Sundays. I hope the other six men 
will be present. Please invite them to come, but 
the sermons are. not for them. The sermons are 
for the man who, although a member of the 
church, does not really know what the founda- 
tions of the Christian faith are. In Mrs. Ward's 
famous novel, " Robert Elsmere," she represents a 
contest between Squire Wendover and the hero 
of the novel, Robert Elsmere. The Squire is not 
a believer in Christianity as the church teaches it. 
He has a very plausible, weighty way of saying 
things. He drops a few remarks against the 
miracles and claims of Jesus, and Robert Els- 
mere capitulates at once. He offers not a word 
of argument, he utters no protest, he simply sur- 
renders. This picture of Mrs. Ward's incensed 
Mr. Gladstone. He thought it was ridiculous. 
According to Mrs. Ward's story there was no con- 
test at all ; it was a paean on one side and a blank 
on the other. A great creed with eighteen cen- 
turies of Christian history behind it was not able 



12 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

to utter a single articulate syllable in its defence. 
But Mrs. Ward was painting true to life when she 
painted that picture. Many a young man has gone 
down just as Robert Elsmere went down, without 
a word to say in defence of the faith which he had 
confessed. I have been dumfounded more than 
once by the silence of Christians when they have 
been caught in situations where they ought to 
have spoken. I have heard a man say with great 
assurance that the doctrine of the Trinity was 
never thought of until the fourth century, and the 
Christian man to whom it was said opened not his 
mouth. I have heard it asserted in the presence 
of Protestant people that the Roman Catholic 
Church is the mother church — and there was no 
protest. I have heard it said that men of science 
had given up believing in the miracles — and there 
was not a word of denial uttered. Certainly the 
church militant is never going to win victories 
until its members know how to defend themselves 
against the people who talk against Christ and his 
church. 

With this much by way of introduction, let us 
now come to the subject for this morning: The 
nature and place of faith in the Christian life. 
\J A hasty glance through the New Testament 

will convince one that faith is a matter of cardinal 
importance to anybody who would be a Christian. 
Jesus began his ministry by urging men to believe, 
and in the upper chamber on the last night of his 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 13 

earthly life we find that the greatest word upon 
his lips is still that word " believe." He is pleading 
with them to believe in him. "You believe in 
God," he said, " believe also in me." "These things 
have I said that you may believe." He was always 
looking for faith. There was no question which 
he asked with such earnestness as the question, 
Do you believe ? And wherever he found it he 
was delighted. There was nothing delighted him 
so much. " O woman, great is thy faith ! " The 
words came from his lips like a shout of triumph. 
" I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." 
With such a eulogy he crowned a Roman centu- 
rion. And the reason why faith delighted him 
was because it gave him an opportunity to do 
wonderful things. The greatest miracles, as the 
New Testament plainly declares, were preceded 
by acts of faith. Jesus is very careful to call 
attention to the fact that it is faith which has 
made his great works possible. How many times 
we read this expression, " And Jesus seeing their 
faith," and then the story goes on to tell us of 
some marvellous thing which he did. But if there 
was no mighty faith, there were no mighty works. 
One of the evangelists tells us that in a certain 
locality he could do no mighty work because of 
the people's unbelief. And so in his conversations 
with his disciples we find that Jesus comes back 
again and again to this fundamental subject. Now 
he reprimands them, " O ye of little faith ! " Now 



14 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

he chides them, " Where is your faith ? " Or again, 
" How is it that you have no faith ? " Again he 
encourages them, " If you have faith as a grain of 
mustard seed/' you shall be able to do things which 
the world calls impossible. This is the first thing, 
then, which Jesus of Nazareth looks for in a man. 
It was the first thing he looked for when he came 
to the earth nineteen hundred years ago, and it is 
the first thing which he will look for when he 
comes again. " When the Son of Man cometh, 
shall he find faith on the earth ? " 

Now all the New Testament writers follow Jesus 
in placing faith at the beginning of the Christian 
life. Paul seldom wrote about anything else. 
The word " faith " occurs again and again on every 
one of his pages. He takes up an expression in 
the Old Testament, "The just shall live by faith," 
and he makes that the key-note of his entire in- 
terpretation of Christianity. " By faith are you 
saved," so he writes to his converts. "We walk 
by faith, not by sight." Further quotation is un- 
necessary. According to the writer to the Hebrews 
everything great that had ever been done in 
Hebrew history was done by men of faith who 
were able to do it because of their faith. Peter 
also makes faith the foundation stone on which 
the whole temple of Christian character is to be 
built. "Add to your faith," he says, "virtue, and 
to your virtue knowledge," etc. Faith is the stone 
upon which all the other stones are to rest. At 



■Mi 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 15 

the end of his gospel John tells us why he has 
written the things which he has just narrated. 
He says, " I have written these things that ye 
might believe." The supreme ambition of John's 
life was to develop in men's hearts this Christian 
faith. It is evident, therefore, if we are to make 
any progress in our study of the Christian religion, 
we must at the very start get a clean-cut concep- 
tion of what faith is and how it works. 

But before we come to our definition let us clear 
away two misapprehensions which have caused a 
deal of mischief. The New Testament never op- ^ 
poses faith to reason. The assumption that faith 
is one thing and reason another thing directly 
opposed to it has estranged many from the Chris- 
tian church. Anything that goes contrary to rea- 
son is especially repugnant to young men. The 
men who have attacked Christianity with most 
effect have been men who have given the impres- 
sion that Christianity crushes the reason. One of 
the causes of the marvellous influence of Thomas 
Paine's book, "The Age of Reason," was that he 
contrasts society when it is moved by principles 
of justice and liberty with the state of society 
as it existed when lazy, superstitious monks were 
supreme. He always confused faith with credulity 
and superstition and ignorance and vice. And if 
that is what faith is, who would not prefer the age 
of reason ? So mighty was the effect of this book 
that at the beginning of the nineteenth century 



TTi 1 *-J)'iii 1 ii.i i. 1 



1 6 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

there was scarcely a handful of Christian students 
in Yale University. "The Age of Reason" swept 
belief in Christianity out of the heads of thousands 
of the brightest young men of our republic. Later 
writers have written in such a manner as to create 
the same impression. Mr. Draper in his " Intel- 
lectual Development of Europe" always writes 
upon the supposition that an age of faith is an 
age of credulity and superstition. He exalts the 
reason and makes us feel that an age in which 
the intellect is given full sweep is immeasurably 
superior to an age when everybody is devout. But 
all this is fallacious. Where does the New Testa- 
^ ment ever make reason the antithesis of faith ? 
Faith is no more opposed to the reason than it is 
opposed to any other faculty of the mind. It is 
v not opposed to memory, it is not opposed to imagi- 
nation, it is not opposed to the aesthetic sense, nor 
is it opposed to the reason. We walk by faith, not 
sight. Sight is the antithesis of faith, but a man 
can walk by faith and reason just as he can walk 
by faith and memory or faith and imagination, or 
faith and the love for the beautiful. The most 
enlightened man in all the world can walk by 
faith. Indeed, all men who walk to any purpose 
walk not by sight but by faith. 

Another misapprehension is that faith is some- 
thing mysterious, which nobody can understand 
without a long course of special preparation. Of 
course we know what faith means when we use it 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH \J 

in ordinary speech ; but, according to the idea of 
many, faith in the Bible sense is a very mysterious 
word indeed, so mysterious that hardly anybody 
can understand it. It has an occult and mystical 
and esoteric meaning which is well nigh indefinable. 
So many think, but their thought is mistaken. 
Faith is not mysterious at all. The word "faith " 
in the New Testament means precisely what it 
means everywhere else. Whenever you find a man 
who is trying to make out that faith is something 
mysterious, you may rest assured that he is be- 
fogged himself, and that he is certain to befog others. 
In the gospels faith means just what it means in 
Fifth Avenue or Tenth Avenue. Faith in Pauline 
epistles means just what it means in Wall Street. 
When I say, " I did not let that man have the 
money because I had no faith in him," when I 
say, " I would do anything for that man because I 
have lots of faith in him," everybody knows what 
I mean — and so everybody ought to know what 
Jesus means when he urges men to have faith. 

Nor should we think that faith is something 
peculiar to religion. Faith is a principle which 
underlies all life. It is a principle by which all 
men live, if they live to any purpose. No man 
succeeds in this world who does not walk by faith. 
Every successful business man is a man of faith. 
He exercises faith every time he enters a new 
market, or throws on the market a new kind of 
goods, or puts his money into a new form of in- 
c 



1 8 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

vestment. He believes that a certain thing is 
good, and believing this he puts his money into it. 
And the more faith a man has, the more success- 
ful — other things being equal — he is likely to be. 
The men of our city who have made the greatest 
fortunes have been men who have had the largest 
capacity for believing. They saw New York big 
when New York was little. Ordinary men all 
around them walked by sight ; they did not walk 
by sight, they walked by faith; and because they 
walked by faith God has given them great rewards. 
\j The biggest men in the world of commerce and of 
money to-day are the men who have shown the 
greatest measure of faith. A man sees that a cer- 
tain region is going to be populous by and by ; he 
runs a railroad through it. He refused to walk by 
sight. By faith he saw the population before it 
was in existence, and because he was willing to 
walk by faith all his descendants are rich. The 
men who saw America large long before it became 
large, the men who seized the natural resources 
and the instruments of production long before 
their neighbors had any idea that these things 
would some day be valuable, are the men who 
to-day sit on thrones ruling the tribes of our 
industrial and commercial worlds. No man can 
succeed in business unless he is a man of faith. 
Nor can a man be a great scientist without faith. 
Scientists cannot walk by sight. The greatest 
scientist has the greatest imagination and the 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 19 

greatest amount of enterprise. He sees a thing in 
his imagination before he sees it in the laboratory. 
By seeing it first with his imagination he is able 
to get it into his laboratory later on. The only 
reason why science is making such tremendous 
strides in these recent times is because science 
has learned to walk by faith. All our inventions 
are the rewards which God has given to men of 
faith. Men believed that a certain thing could be 
done, and their belief gave them the power to do it. 
Columbus believed that he could cross the ocean, and 
believing thus he did it. Let us then get rid of the 
idea that Christianity is a little field with a high hedge 
around it, and that as soon as one leaves the world 
and gets inside the hedge, all his familiar words lose 
their old meanings, and all the principles by which 
life is lived must be changed. Christianity uses pre- 
cisely the words which are used in the streets, and 
she uses them with precisely the same signification. 
Christianity is simply the principle of life. A man 
who makes a successful business man makes a suc- 
cessful Christian, because he has already mastered 
the alphabet of the high art of living. All the great 
deeds in the moral history of the race, just as all 
the great works in the world of commerce, have 
been done by men of colossal faith. In one sense, 
then, there is no such thing as unbelief. Every- 
body is in some sense a believer, and every person, 
no matter who he is, walks by faith. 
As Edward Bulwer Lytton says : — 



20 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

"There is no unbelief; 
Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod 
And waits -to see it push away the clod, 
He trusts in God. 

" Whoever says when clouds are in the sky, 
Be patient, heart, light breaketh by and by, 
Trusts the Most High. 

" Whoever sees, 'neath field of winter snow, 
The silent harvest of the future grow, 
God's power must know. 

" Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep, 
Content to lock each sense in slumber deep, 
Knows God will keep. 

" Whoever says, To-morrow, The Unknown, 
The Future, trusts that power alone, 
He dares disown. 

11 There is no unbelief; 
And day by day and night, unconsciously, 
The heart lives by that faith the lips deny, 
God knoweth why." 

Having dealt with these misapprehensions, now 
let us consider two serious objections which have 
been urged against the New Testament teaching 
concerning faith. The New Testament, as every- 
body knows, makes belief a voluntary act. We are 
commanded to believe. If we do not believe, we 
are condemned. And this is all wrong — so many 
a man has said — because belief is involuntary and 
cannot be commanded. The proof must be forth- 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 21 

coming, and when the proof is at hand, then belief 
becomes inevitable. But belief not being under 
the control of the will cannot be produced by order. 
That was the objection which the English poet 
Shelley brought against the New Testament. It 
disgusted him with it at once. He thought that the 
religion which demanded anything so unreasonable 
could not be divine, and so he put Christianity into 
his waste basket along with other things which he 
did not want. 

What is the faith which the church demands ? 
what is the faith for which the New Testament 
pleads ? Fortunately for us we have a definition of 
it in the first verse of the eleventh chapter of the 
letter to the Hebrews : " Now faith is the sub- 
stance of things hoped for." Or, as you will see 
by consulting the margin of your Revised Bible, it 
is the " giving substance to things hoped for." 
Christian faith is belief in Jesus Christ. To believe 
in him is to hope that he is able to do what he 
says he can do. He says he can save men from 
their sins. He says that men can follow him and 
become like him. 

And now the question is, Can a man hope to 
become like him ? Can a man hope to have the 
mind that was also in him? Can a man hope to 
have his spirit, his disposition, his temper? Can 
a man hope to live a reverent, filial, godly life ? Of 
course he can thus hope ! If he does not hope it, 
it is because he is morally rotten and has lost the 



22 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

power of aspiration. If he does not hope it, it 
is because he loves darkness rather than light, and 
the reason he does that is because his works are 
evil. A man who will not hope to be a good man 
is a man who is self-condemned. And if it is pos- 
sible for every man to hope to become like Christ, 
it is also possible for every man in less or fuller 
measure to give substance to the thing that he 
hopes for. He can begin at once to act in such a 
way as to realize his hopes. He can by energetic 
action build into his life the pattern shown. Faith, 
then, contains two elements : first, the element of 
hope, and secondly, the element of energetic action 
— and both these elements are under the control 
of the human will. We can hope, and we can, with 
greater or less success, give substance to our hopes. 
And every man who hopes and gives substance to 
his hope is a man of faith. 

But there is another objection still more plaus- 
ible. Is not Christianity unreasonable in demanding 
belief at the start? Should it not furnish conclu- 
sive proof, and then ask us to believe? No, it 
cannot do that. If it should do so, it would go 
contrary to life as we know it in every other de- 
partment. In every field of human activity belief 
comes first and proof comes second. Certainly it 
is that way in the world of business. A man be- 
lieves that a certain market is good, and enters it. 
If he did not believe it, he would not enter it. If 
he waits until other people enter it and prove that 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 23 

it is good, he has lost his opportunity. A man be- 
lieves that a certain enterprise is good, he goes into 
it and makes a fortune. If he waits until the enter- 
prise succeeds in the hands of some other man, he 
is out and the other man is in. If I say to a piece 
of real estate : " O real estate, please tell me, will 
you advance in value a hundred per cent within the 
next ten years? If you will give me conclusive 
proof, then I will buy you," — and the real estate 
answers not a word, for it considers me a fool. If 
I do not buy the real estate until it is plainly 
proved that its value will double within ten years, 
I shall never have a chance to buy it at all. 

And as it is in the business world, so it is in the 
world of science. Science never waits for proof. 
She always starts out with what she calls an 
hypothesis. She supposes something, she takes 
something for granted, and taking something for 
granted she proceeds to walk out in search of 
proof. She makes her observations of the mate- 
rial universe, and sets up what she is pleased to 
call the nebular hypothesis. It is only an assump- 
tion, but having assumed this she goes to work to 
experiment and investigate and observe, and the 
result of it all is she gets so many evidences of 
the correctness of this hypothesis that she settles 
down upon it as something proved. Fifty years 
ago somebody came along with the evolutionary 
hypothesis. It is an assumption. Haeckel of 
Germany admits that it is not yet proved, but 



24 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 

asserts that it is going to be proved. Scientists at 
present are making observations, collecting data; 
the proof will be forthcoming later on. And so it 
is in the world of invention. Fulton believed that 
a steamship could go up the Hudson to Albany. 
The belief came first, the sailing of the boat came 
second. Morse believed that he could send dots 
and dashes through a wire. The belief was first, 
the telegram second. Bell believed that he could 
send voice vibrations through a wire. The belief 
was first, the telephonic message second. Marconi 
believed that he could speak across the Atlantic 
without an intervening wire. He did it. The 
belief was first, and the message was second. You 
never can get a great good before a belief, but 
always after it. Belief is the condition of great 
and noble deeds. 

Now the principle upon which men act in the 
world of business and science and invention is 
precisely the principle on which Jesus says that 
all men ought to act in the realm of religion. 
Believe — that is the point at which we are to 
begin. If we will believe, then all things become 
possible. Let us take Christ as our hypothesis. 
Let us suppose that he will save us. Let us hope 
that he is divine. Let us make this venture. Let 
us take this risk. We cannot have the proof at 
first, but let us act upon the hypothesis, and then 
begin to gather evidence, making observations, 
experimenting from week to week. The proof 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FAITH 2$ 

will be forthcoming later on. Would you believe 
in prayer? Take it for granted that prayer is 
beneficial and then experiment, — that is scien- 
tific. Would you believe that Christ is divine? 
Assume that he is, and then experiment by trust- 
ing him, doing the things he says you ought to do, 
— the proof will be abundant later on. The New 
Testament is not asking of us an unreasonable 
thing when it tells us first of all to believe. 

Well may we all exclaim, then, in the words of 
one of old, "Lord, -we believe; help thou our un- 
belief." It is our lack of faith which is the root of 
all our religious troubles. We have not enterprise 
enough, we do not trust sufficiently to the grace 
and power of God. What are you hoping ? Faith 
is giving substance to the things you hope for. 
What do you hope for? Do you hope that you 
will be a better, stronger man? Then give sub- 
stance to your hope, and in this way prove that 
you are a man of faith indeed. Do we hope that 
our church within the next ten years will double 
its membership and quadruple its power? Then 
let us give substance to our hope and prove that we 
are men and women worthy to be enrolled with the 
heroes and heroines of the eleventh chapter of the 
letter to the Hebrews. Do you hope that the six 
men of whom I have spoken will be here next Sun- 
day morning ? Then give substance to your faith, 
and they will be here. 



Mi 



II 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF 
REASON IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 



II 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 
IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

" Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." 

— Isaiah i :i8. 

The Christian religion claims the entire man 
for God. No faculty or power of his nature is 
neglected or overlooked. This is made clear in 
Jesus' definition of the first and great command- 
ment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind, and with all thy strength." Every province 
of the kingdom of man's nature is taken in. And 
in order to make this so clear that no one can pos- 
sibly mistake it, he uses the great adjective "all" 
four times. It is all thy soul and all thy heart and 
all thy mind and all thy strength. There is to be 
no outlying district of any one of the various prov- 
inces which is to be allowed to remain foreign to 
the king. Paul follows the Master very closely in 
this teaching. He too says that the entire man 
has been redeemed and belongs to God. When he 
wished great things for his churches it was his 
habit to link three words together, — spirit, soul, and 

29 



30 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

body. Both the visible and invisible parts of a 
man come within the scope of redemption. We 
find Paul again and again insisting upon it that the 
body is to obey the law of Christ. The heathen 
world was ready to allow the mind to come in, but 
many of the pagan converts preferred to allow 
their bodies to stand outside the temple door. It 
was because of this tendency to divorce religion 
from morality that Paul uses such an exhortation 
as, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the 
mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a 
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is 
your reasonable service." And all of the apostolic 
writers are insistent upon the right of the intellect 
to a place in the Christian life. Peter says to his 
converts, " Be ready always to give answer to 
every man that asketh you a reason concerning the 
hope that is in you." He himself had been chal- 
lenged by a hostile world and had been obliged to 
state the evidence upon which his Christian faith 
was built, and he realized that every professing 
Christian must face a world that is ready to attack 
him, and that a Christian is helpless if he does not 
know how to give an answer to the man who 
opposes his faith. It is because of this that the 
apostle gives knowledge such an important place 
in the Christian character. " Add to your faith 
virtue, and to virtue knowledge." Paul gives the 
same advice to his converts throughout Asia Minor. 
In writing to the Colossians he says, " Let your 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 31 

speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, 
that ye may know how ye ought to answer every 
man." A Christian who does not know how to 
answer the man who opposes his religion, is to a 
large extent impotent and useless in the great 
work which God has given him to do. In Paul's 
very first letter he lays down a principle of the 
greatest significance. "Test all things, hold fast 
that which is good." The word "test" he took 
from the world of banking. Bankers subjected 
every doubtful coin that came into their possession 
to a test, in order to see whether it was genuine or 
counterfeit. Paul would carry the same habit of 
scrutiny into the field of religion. We are to use 
all the faculties we have. Nothing is to be received 
until it has been tested. We are to throw away the 
false and hold fast that which is good. And with 
Peter and Paul John agrees. In his first letter he 
says, " Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try 
the spirits whether they are of God, because many 
false prophets have gone out into the world." The 
writers of the New Testament everywhere assume 
that a man is not going to become a Christian 
without using his mind, and that he cannot remain 
a Christian unless he builds his life upon founda- 
tions which the reason approves. 

But notwithstanding the explicit teaching of the 
New Testament, the impression has gotten abroad 
that faith and reason are opposed to each other, 
that both cannot flourish in the same man at the 



32 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

same time, that if a man wants to be a man of 
faith, he must not think deeply, and that if he 
gives free rein to his reason, it is likely to go 
hard with his faith. In many a circle it is taken 
for granted that if a man becomes a Christian, he 
must allow his mind to be shackled, and that if 
he wishes to think freely and follow the truth 
whithersoever it may lead him, he had better not 
attach himself to the church. 

Now a more mischievous impression could not 
possibly get abroad. Joseph Glanvill, near the 
middle of the seventeenth century wrote this : 
" There is not anything that I know which hath done 
more mischief to religion than the disparaging of 
reason, for hereby the very foundations of Christian 
faith have been undermined. If reason must not 
be heard, the being of God and the authority of 
Scripture can neither be proved nor defended ; and 
so our faith drops to the ground like a house that 
hath no foundation." If that was true in the seven- 
teenth century, it is doubly true nowadays, for the 
entire world is using its intellect as never before. 
Never has the human mind been so alert and so active 
since the days of the Reformation as it is to-day. 
Everywhere men are investigating, sifting, search- 
ing, digging. It is an age of analysis, an age of 
discovery. Everything is held out under the 
searching light of reason. Everything is plucked 
up by the roots, in order that the roots may be 
studied. No part of God's universe is counted 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 33 

too sacred to be invaded by the mind. The bar- 
riers of the heavens have been broken down, and 
men have gone with their instruments to the out- 
most rim of stars. Men have brought up, by 
means of the microscope, a universe which God 
had hidden out of sight. Our age is acting upon 
the assumption that the human mind has a right 
to know, and in order to know, it is its privilege 
to investigate, to argue, and to go to the bottom. 
If in such an age as this the Christian church 
should lay its hand upon the Bible, and say, 
" Hush, you must not pry into this. This is God's 
book. It must not be analyzed ; " if the Christian 
church should say to men and women who come 
to it with their perplexities : " The mysteries of 
our faith are all tied up and laid away. They 
must not be disturbed," then the Christian church 
would abdicate her high position and would forfeit 
her right to be called the teacher of the truth. 
And it is young men especially who are most 
likely to be hurt by any such false impression, for 
the mind is never so ambitious and so intensely 
active as it is in men between sixteen and thirty 
years of age. It is in those years that the mind 
is ready to dare all things and to go anywhere, 
and if young men get the idea that the church has 
written over her door, "All intellectual freedom 
abandon, ye who enter here," they will quietly 
pass on and enter some other door. And they 
ought to ! 



34 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

How did this impression ever get abroad ? 
Nothing ever comes into existence without a 
reason, and it is worth our while to find out just 
how this mischievous idea got afloat. Undoubtedly 
the action of the mediaeval church is in part respon- 
sible for it, for the mediaeval church was afraid of 
reason, and did not hesitate to say so through the 
mouths of many of her very greatest teachers. In 
the Middle Ages the Christian church became afraid 
of reason, and this fear was not so senseless as we 
often think. There were causes for it. In those 
dark times the church was on a rough and danger- 
ous sea. Life was all chaotic. Wild and barbarous 
peoples were just beginning to learn to live the 
new and higher life. A terrific storm was sweep- 
ing across the world, and in such troubled times 
it seemed much safer to hold tight to the decisions 
of the early councils rather than to trust the 
church to the thinking of men who were then 
alive. We can never deal fairly with the mediaeval 
church unless we remember the conditions in the 
midst of which it found itself. The position which 
it took seemed plausible and reasonable to the wis- 
est and the greatest of its leaders. Around the 
Bible it planted a thick and heavy hedge — the 
hedge of tradition. The Bible must be interpreted, 
it said, by this tradition. The Bible must be sup- 
plemented also by this tradition. No man must 
interpret the Bible in such a way as to contradict 
tradition, and no one must dare to interpret either 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 35 

the Bible or tradition, said the mediaeval church, 
but priests. A distinguished writer of the fifteenth 
century lays down this surprising proposition — it 
represents the feeling of his time : " There are 
two books : the book of nature and the book of 
scripture. The first book is open to everybody, 
the second book is open to priests alone." In an 
age of ignorance it became common for men to 
pride themselves upon believing things that were 
incredible. Even so great a man as Lord Bacon 
is reported to have said, "The more incredible 
anything is, the more honor I do God in believing 
it." This is the principle upon which many medi- 
aeval Christians acted. There was nothing too 
preposterous or too incredible for them to accept. 
Long after the Middle Ages had ended there was a 
distinguished man who said, " By my faith I am a 
Christian, by my reason I am a heathen." 

And this mediaeval temper has come down to 
the present time. It is found very often, even 
among Protestants. There are professing Chris- 
tians in all parts of the country who are secretly 
afraid of reason. They do not like to think them- 
selves, they see no necessity for thinking, they feel 
that if a man thinks about the doctrines of his 
faith he is almost certain to become a heretic. 
The man who thinks is to them what Cassius was 
to Julius Caesar. "Yon Cassius has a lean and 
hungry look, he thinks too much." They prefer 
men who are sleek and fat. They make religion 



36 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

merely a sentimental and emotional thing ; they 
put no thought into it. They speak of doctrines 
as something quite superfluous. They take no 
interest in doctrines, and as for a dogma, it is 
nothing but a cur to be kicked about the streets. 
And as for theology, that is something to be 
steadily eschewed. Theology instead of being 
what it is, the greatest of the sciences, is to them 
only a foolish piece of stupid speculation. It is 
just such Christians as these who perpetuate the 
impression that Christianity has nothing to do with 
the reason, but moves entirely in the realm of the 
emotions. 

And then no doubt the use of certain words has 
had not a little to do with deepening this impres- 
sion. An infidel is usually known as a "free 
thinker." The first man who rejected Christianity 
and then called himself a "free thinker" builded 
better than he knew. That epithet was a telling 
stroke of genius. The word itself contains an 
argument against the Christian religion. If a 
man who rejects Christianity is a free thinker, the 
implication is that a man who accepts it is a bound 
thinker, — a man whose reason is in chains. But 
the implication is not fair. A Christian has a right 
to think just as freely as any other man. All 
Christians, if they avail themselves of their privi- 
leges, are free thinkers. I studied pedagogy first, 
and then law, and then theology. I was first a 
teacher, and then a lawyer, and then a preacher. 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 37 

But I never thought any more freely when I was 
a teacher or a lawyer than I have thought since I 
became a preacher. A Christian puts no shackles 
on his mind. He is not a good Christian unless 
he allows his mind perfect freedom. Our conclu- 
sions are vitiated if we reach them by mental pro- 
cesses which have been forced. If a sceptic says, 
"I am a freethinker," then I will answer him, " So 
am I ! " Mischief has also been caused by the use 
of the word " liberal " before " Christian." If a man 
cuts out the best part of the New Testament, he 
immediately calls himself a liberal Christian. The 
implication is that a man who accepts the New 
Testament as it is must be illiberal. The implica- 
tion is unfair. I accept the New Testament from 
the first page to the last, and I will not allow any 
man to insinuate in my presence that I am not a 
liberal Christian. It is the duty of all Christians 
to be liberal, to welcome all truth with open mind 
and generous heart. 

The use of the word " rationalist " has also been 
misleading. The word came into common use in 
the sixteenth century to designate the class of 
people who gave an exalted place to reason, and 
the word was seized upon by certain infidel philoso- 
phers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
who became known throughout the world as Ration- 
alists. The word carries with it the implication 
that a man who accepts Christianity is an irration- 
alist; that is, he does not use his reason. If a 



38 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

man reasons, he rejects Christianity ; if he refuses 
to reason, he accepts it. The insinuation is unjust. 
All Christians are rationalists, or ought to be, in 
the sense that they make a vigorous use of their 
mind. The Christian religion is a rational religion, 
and the evidences for it are rational. It addresses 
itself primarily to the reason. 

Now let us face certain facts. The only way to 
dissipate erroneous impressions is to throw upon 
them the light of indisputable facts. 

The reason is one of the constituent faculties of 
the human mind. It is one of God's greatest gifts 
to man. He gave it to man that man might use it 
for his glory and for the welfare of the race. The 
reason, as well as all other faculties of the mind, 
is redeemed by Jesus Christ ; and what God hath 
cleansed let no man call unclean, or reject. Man's 
reason is the judge who sits on the bench. It is 
by means of the reason that we detect falsehood, 
that we are able to distinguish the right from the 
wrong. Which is true, theism or pantheism ? The 
reason must judge. Is Christ human or divine ? 
There are arguments for each side, and the reason 
must weigh them. Is Protestantism or Catholi- 
cism best ? How can we tell, if reason does not 
speak ? No religion can be acceptable permanently 
that does not allow the Chief Justice to sit in the 
place appointed him by God. 

Christianity demands the use of the reason. 
The gospel according to Isaiah is, " Come, let us 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 39 

reason together." It is God that utters the words. 
According to Isaiah, God's arraignment of the 
Israelitish people is based on the fact that those 
people are not thinking enough. His lamentation 
runs : " Israel doth not know. My people doth 
not consider." They were going through their 
ceremonies and offering their sacrifices, singing 
their songs, and saying their prayers, but they 
were not thinking. God calls upon them to repent, 
and says to them, " Come now, and let us reason 
together." The Jewish canon of Scripture was 
built up by men who made free use of their reason. 
The prophets of Israel all spoke a message that 
was distasteful to the ambition and the wishes 
of their generation. Not one of the prophets had 
in his own lifetime any considerable influence. 
The prophets spoke their message, but Israel went 
steadily down to the abyss. Prophets thundered 
and wept, but Judah fell. It was not until after 
the captivity that the Jewish nation began to see 
that what the prophets had spoken was true. It 
was then that they saw for the first time that the 
prophetic interpretation was God's interpretation, 
and the prophetic condemnation was the condem- 
nation of heaven. It was because it became clear 
to men's reason that Amos and Isaiah and the rest 
of them had uttered things that were true, that the 
prophets were canonized and seated on thrones and 
given the right to judge the tribes of Israel. If 
men had not exercised their reason, we should never 



40 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

have had any Old Testament. The New Testa- 
ment was built up in precisely the same way. As 
the years went on and it became increasingly clear 
that Jesus of Nazareth had indeed expressed the 
message of heaven, when the things which he pre- 
dicted came to pass and the principles which he 
enunciated were discovered to be mightier than the 
principles upon which the pagan world had been 
built, it was then that men, by the exercise of their 
reason, began to place the writings of the New 
Testament on a level with the writings of the Old 
Testament prophets. But it was not done until 
the experience of history had made it clear to the 
reason that in these writings God had indeed spoken 
to men. 

The Bible can never escape from the reason. 
If at any time in the future any book of the 
sixty-six books that make up the big book should 
become offensive to the enlightened reason of the 
church, it would simply be cast out. No Bible, book, 
or Christian doctrine will be carried along perma- 
nently which is offensive to the highest reason of 
Christian men. Christianity, we claim, is the 
truth, and truth appeals to the reason. According 
to some scholars, the opening lines of St. John's 
gospel ought to be : In the beginning was the rea- 
son, and the reason was with God, and the reason 
was God. If Christ is the reason, and if he is the 
light that lights every man that comes into the 
world, then our reason is something like his, and 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 41 

while it may err, and does err, in the days of its 
immaturity, it is certain by and by to arrive at 
conclusions which are the same as his. There can 
be no permanent estrangement between reason and 
Christ. 

The third fact to be borne in mind is that the 
mediaeval church is not the church of to-day. 
Many persons constantly attack Christianity as 
though the church of our time was precisely like 
the church of five hundred years ago. Think of 
what physicians thought and did only a hundred 
years ago. I do not find people taunting the phy- 
sicians of to-day and making fun of them because 
of certain errors physicians were guilty of a century 
ago. Why should the Christian church be ever- 
lastingly derided and opposed because of mistaken 
notions of men who have been in their graves hun- 
dreds of years ? It is the Protestant church which 
is leading the world to-day, and the Protestant 
church from the very beginning has given to rea- 
son its rights. Modern history began in the year 
1 52 1 when an Augustinian monk by the name of 
Martin Luther went to the Diet of Worms to give 
an account of himself to the Emperor of Germany. 
The appearance of Luther before the emperor is a 
picture that ought to be burned into the retina of 
the eyes of every young man in America. It is 
April, and evening has come. The torches have 
been lighted, and they cast a flickering glare over 
the faces of the earnest men who have come 



42 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

together to hear this monk from Wittenberg. As 
Luther goes through the door, the greatest general 
of Germany taps him on the shoulder and says, " My 
poor monk, my poor monk, you are on the way to 
make such a stand as I have never made in my 
toughest battle." And what the general said was 
true. The emperor is there, the electors, and the 
princes of Germany are there. In front of the 
king there is a table on which are piled books 
which this Augustinian monk has written. Luther 
is now thirty-eight years old. For over fifteen 
years he has been a monk. The fundamental 
principles of the Roman Catholic Church have been 
built into his mind. But as a student he has 
learned that church councils can make mistakes. 
He has said so, and has said so openly. The 
question before the Diet of Worms is : Will this 
Augustinian monk recant ? The emperor tells him 
haughtily that he is not there to question matters 
which have been settled in general councils long 
ago, and that what he wants is a plain answer with- 
out horns, whether he will retract what he has said 
contradicting the decisions of the Council of Con- 
stance. Luther rises to reply, and this is what he 
says : " Since your imperial Majesty requires a plain 
answer, I will give one without horns or hoofs. It 
is this, that I must be convinced either by the tes- 
timony of Scripture or by clear argument. I can- 
not trust the pope or councils by themselves, for 
both have erred. I cannot and will not retract." 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 43 

An awful silence falls upon them all. And then the 
Augustinian monk continues : " I can do nothing 
else. Here I stand. So help me God. Amen." 

And as Luther passed out the door some Span- 
iards who were present hissed him. Spain was 
at that time the leading nation of the world, and 
God heard those hisses, and he laid his hand on 
Spain and led her slowly to the rear of the pro- 
cession of European nations, and there he has held 
her for two hundred years. And God laid hold of 
Germany, at that time one of the most belated of 
all European nations, and told her to go up higher, 
and she to-day stands in the forefront of all the 
nations of the continent of Europe, because she 
followed Luther. "I must be convinced by clear 
argument." That was the position of Luther, and 
that is the position of Protestantism whenever it is 
true to itself. When you hear men then criticise 
the Christian church, and speak of it as though 
nothing had happened since Luther's day, remind 
them that the Diet of Worms was held three hun- 
dred and eighty-two years ago. 

And it ought to be further understood that the 
members of the Christian church to-day who de- 
preciate doctrine and dogma, and who sneer at 
theology, are not the creditable representatives of 
the Christian faith. Young people say sometimes 
quite enthusiastically : " Oh, come on, and let us do 
a lot of good. What do we care for the doctrines ! " 
And off they go quite jauntily. But, alas ! their 



44 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

enthusiasm has all evaporated before the sun 
reaches noon. The only men and women who 
are able to bear the burden and the heat of the 
day, and who are found at their work when the sun 
goes down, are the men and women whose Chris- 
tian faith is rooted and grounded in reason. And 
if Isaiah were alive to-day, the accusation which he 
would make against large sections of the church is 
the accusation which he made against the people 
of his day : " You do not know. You do not con- 
sider. You say your prayers, you sing your hymns, 
but you do not think." And because we do not 
think deeply, soberly, and in the fear of God, the 
Christian church is a maimed and crippled thing, 
and fails to do the mighty work which has been 
given it to do. 

But while the human reason has a lofty place in 
the council chamber of the faculties of the soul, 
we should bear in mind that it has its limitations, 
and that what passes for reason with many men is 
often something else. 

The word "reason" is commonly used loosely. 
What men sometimes call reason is nothing but 
opinion. A certain man asserts in my presence 
that the narrative of the virgin birth is contrary 
to reason. He says it very blandly and with great 
assurance. But I remind him that a distinguished 
professor of philosophy, who has one of the finest 
and keenest minds in America, says that the 
story is not contrary to his reason. Nor is it 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 45 

contrary to the reason of ten thousand men who 
read it and believe it and feel it to be altogether 
reasonable. It is not correct then for you, my 
friend, to say that that story is contrary to human 
reason. What you mean to say is that it is con- 
trary to your reason ; and that, you know, is 
another thing. But are you sure that it is really 
contrary to your reason ? What you are probably 
trying to say is that it is contrary to your opinion. 
But opinion is one thing, and human reason is 
another. Opinion is the product of a man's read- 
ing and thinking and hearing. What a man thinks 
on any subject depends on what he has heard and 
read and thought. It is for this cause that one's 
opinions change from year to year. We hold a 
certain opinion, and then we read more widely, or 
live more deeply, and our opinion changes. When 
you are saying, therefore, that the story of Christ's 
birth is contrary to your opinion, you are not say- 
ing anything of great significance, for your opinion 
might change after more extensive reading or after 
a little deeper thinking. I travel into Alaska and 
meet an Eskimo who has never heard of the 
X-rays, and I say to him : " I have seen every 
bone in that hand of mine. I know the size and 
shape and exact location of every bone just as 
clearly as I should know all this if the flesh were 
scraped away." And he looks at me with surprise 
and says, "That is contrary to reason." What the 
man is trying to say is that it is contrary to his 



46 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

opinion. We should not expect an Eskimo to use 
language accurately ; we might expect it, however, 
of a New Yorker. Or I travel into the South Seas 
and I meet a man there who has never so much as 
heard of ice, and I say, "My southern friend, I 
walked across a lake one day in February and 
never even got my feet wet." And he throws up 
his hands in amazement, and says, " That is con- 
trary to reason." What he is trying to say is that 
it is contrary to his experience. When the evan- 
gelist tells me that Jesus walked across a Pales- 
tinian lake in April, I have no right to say that is 
contrary to my reason. It is contrary to my ex- 
perience. But my experience is rather a diminu- 
tive affair. If I am to cut down Christianity to 
the dimensions of my experience, I shall not have 
anything left of surpassing value. The fact is, 
Christ transcends my experience at every point. 
What he said runs as far beyond me as what he 
did. " I do always those things that are pleasing 
unto him." That is farther beyond me than walk- 
ing on the water. " He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father." I never could say a thing like that. 
Moreover, a man is not all intellect. There is 
something in us more than reason. We have 
instincts as well as reason. We see things and 
feel things instinctively. One might feel the 
presence of a cat in a dark room, although the cat 
were absolutely still. Many a person has been able 
to feel the presence of a burglar, although even the 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 47 

breathing of the burglar was not audible. We 
know many things which have never been reached 
by reason. We have what is called an intuitive 
faculty — we see things. How do I know that two 
and two do not make five ? I see that they make 
four. I never reached that conclusion by reason. 
How do I know that a straight line is the short- 
est distance between two points ? That truth was 
never reached by reason. There is more in me 
than intellect. I often watch the divine artist paint 
a sunset, and sometimes when he puts on the colors 
in unusually gorgeous ways, I get into a glow. It 
is not my reason that is at work. I am not reason- 
ing about the sunset. The psychologist tells me 
that I have an aesthetic sense, and I suppose I have. 
At any rate, I know that I can appreciate a sunset 
without the aid of reason. And then we have an 
emotional nature — a nature that has its tastes and 
affections, its hungerings and its aspirations. 

This part of us is certainly as important as the 
so-called intellectual. It was at this point that 
Thomas Huxley and John Fiske were obliged to 
part company. Both men were great men, but Fiske 
had the richer nature. There was more of Fiske 
than there was of Huxley. You who have read the 
Life of Huxley by his son, know that his mental 
limitations were serious. His prejudices were nu- 
merous and solid. His mind moved within narrow 
limits, but it moved powerfully in the direction of 
the work which God had given him to do. Huxley 



48 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

asserted that there is but one kind of knowledge ; 
which is not so. And he maintained that there is 
only one kind of evidence ; and this also is erroneous. 
Fiske would not follow him in this. Fiske was 
inclined to ask him in the words of Tennyson : — 

" Who forged that other influence, 
That heat of inward evidence, 
That makes one doubt against the sense ? " 

Fiske took into account the great world within as 
well as the great world without. Oxygen, hydro- 
gen, and nitrogen are to be considered ; but so also 
are the affections, the aspirations, the demands of 
the soul. These are facts just as truly as are the 
facts of the material world. Such a man as Fiske 
could say with Tennyson : — 

u If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 
I heard a voice ' believe no more,' 
And heard an ever breaking shore 
That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 

" A warmth within the breast would melt 

The freezing reason's colder part, 

And like a man in wrath the heart 

Stood up and answered, ' I have felt.' " 

Now the feeling part of our nature is just as reli- 
able as the arguing part, for both have been given 
to us by God, and the testimony of each must be 
taken in order to secure the complete message of 
the soul. 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 49 

Moreover, the sphere in which reason works is 
limited. For instance, reason never discovers any- 
thing. It works over material furnished us by the 
senses and by the imagination. Scientists do not 
discover things by their reason. They do their 
greatest work by intuition, by guessing, hoping, 
dreaming, anticipating. Moreover, reason cannot 
walk in any region through which experience has 
not travelled. Take such a simple path as that 
which leads from ice to water, or from water to 
steam. No man that God ever made could reason 
his way from a lump of ice to a cup of water until 
experience had pointed out the way. Nor could 
any man reason his way from a cup of water to 
a cloud of steam unless experience had gone 
before him. And so the great things in religion 
are not reached by the reason. They are reached 
by other faculties of the mind. As the Old Testa- 
ment puts it : " Canst thou by searching find out 
God ? " No. " Be still and know that I am God." 
Reason then is not the avenue to religious knowl- 
edge. The knowledge comes to the heart that is 
humble. " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 
and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the 
wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto 
babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in 
thy sight." Christ never reached this truth by 
argument. Nor does any other man reach the 
great truths of life by means of his reason. We 
learn the best things by loving, by suffering. Or, 



50 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

in other words, by deep living. Goethe, in many- 
ways, was a pagan, but it was he who wrote : — 

" Who never ate his bread in sorrow, 
Who never spent the midnight hours 
Weeping and watching for the morrow ; 
He knows you not, ye unseen powers." 

And so people as a rule become Christians not by 
listening to arguments, but by loving. A man has 
a child in whom his heart is bound up, and the 
child dies. The man is crushed, and throws him- 
self back on God, and things become credible that 
seemed incredible before. He has climbed, not 
by argument, but by bleeding. A woman cares 
nothing for religion, she is interested in books and 
art. So long as her husband lives, her life seems to 
be complete, but by and by he dies. The art and 
the books have lost their fascination, and she throws 
herself upon God, and he lifts her out of her dis- 
tress. She has reached Christianity not by rea- 
soning, but by loving. And as it is not possible 
for reason to conduct us into the religious life, so 
it is impossible for reason to keep us there. No 
one can think too much, provided he keeps his 
work proportionate to his thinking. If a man 
thinks and does not work, he is as foolish as the 
man who eats and does not exercise. Eating is 
good. It has its place. It is essential. But if a 
man does nothing but eat, he will need the doctor 
shortly and the undertaker later on. And so it is 
with a Christian. If he does nothing but think, 



THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 51 

and refuses to work, his mind becomes diseased, 
his heart becomes atrophied, he becomes spiritually 
dead. Reason has its place, but reason is not 
everything. 

Everybody ought to act reasonably. I beseech 
you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to become 
Christians, because this is your reasonable service. 
Often the very men who make the loudest profes- 
sions of acting reasonably have the very least 
reason in their action. I try to convince a certain 
man that the sunset is beautiful. I say: "Oh, look 
at it ! Could anything be more glorious ! " And 
he stands with his back to the sunset and will not 
look at it. He says: "I do not believe what you 
say. Prove it to me." And I say, "Turn round 
and look." He says, "I won't." Is he reasonable? 
I endeavor to persuade another man that Beetho- 
ven's Ninth Symphony is great. The orchestra is 
playing, the instruments are sweeping through the 
allegro, and I say to this man : " Wagner was right. 
Instruments cannot carry music higher than that. 
If music is to travel any farther, it must be by 
means of the human voice. Is not that fine ? " And 
the man puts his fingers in his ears, and says : " I 
do not believe what you say. Prove it to me." 
And I say, " Listen ! " and he says, " I won't." 
Is he reasonable ? I endeavor to persuade another 
man that a violet is fragrant. I say to him : " This 
odor is so delicate. Just smell it ! " But the man 
has his fingers on the sides of his nose. He says : 



52 THE NATURE AND PLACE OF REASON 

"I won't. Prove it to me." I say, "Will you 
smell it ? " He says, " No." Is he reasonable ? I 
endeavor to persuade another man that sugar is 
sweet. I say, " This sugar is sweet. I have eaten 
a piece just like this." He says, " I do not believe 
it." I say to him, " Taste it." He says, "I won't." 
Is he reasonable ? I endeavor to persuade another 
man that a cube of gold is heavier than a cube of 
iron. Both are of the same size. I say to him, 
"Take the gold in one hand and the iron in the 
other, and you will see." And he says, "I won't." 
Is he reasonable ? I endeavor to persuade another 
man to become a Christian. I say to him, "Jesus 
Christ is sufficient for every need of the soul," and 
he says, "I do not believe it." I say to him, "Try 
him ! " And he says, " I won't." Is he reasonable ? 



Ill 



THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT 
UNEASINESS IN THE CHRISTIAN 
CHURCH 



Ill 

THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASI- 
NESS IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

" Can ye not discern the signs of the times? " 

— Matthew xvi : 3. 

That is a question in which there is the sting of 
a rebuke. It is one of the most caustic and au- 
dacious of our Lord's questions. He addressed it 
to men of great intelligence and wide influence, 
men who were high up in the pictures of their day, 
men who held the foremost positions in the church 
and sat in the chief seats at the feasts. These 
men were experts in interpreting the signs of the 
weather. The Jews paid more attention to the 
weather than we do, because they had no weather 
bureau to look after it. These men could stand in 
the streets of Jerusalem and from the direction 
which the smoke took on the last day of the Feast 
of Tabernacles could predict the amount of rainfall 
for the coming year. When they saw the sun slip 
down into the Mediterranean, leaving behind him a 
sky that was glorious, they said, " Good weather 
to-morrow ! " And when the sun arose above the 
Mount of Olives through a sky that looked like the 

55 



56 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

face of a man who was angry, they said, "Bad 
weather to-day ! " And Jesus is ready to acknowl- 
edge that in all such matters these men are experts. 
" You know," he said, " how to read the face of the 
sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times ? 
You know how to interpret the forms of mist that 
float between your eyes and the sun, but do you not 
know how to read the forces by whose action a new 
world is about to be created ? " Wonderful things 
had happened. Judah had fallen from her high 
place under the heel of Rome. The nation was 
politically dependent, morally degraded, spiritually 
dead. John the Baptist had come out of the desert 
with his flaming message. There was a ferment 
in men's hearts everywhere. A prophet of Naz- 
areth has been doing wonderful deeds, and saying 
things more marvellous than his deeds. And yet 
not a man in all this crowd realizes that a crisis of 
human history is at hand. Every man of them is 
as blind as a bat at noon. They know how to 
discuss weather, but they cannot read the mighty 
movements of the mind of God. 

This question is of perennial significance because 
the ditch into which the Pharisees fell is always 
open, and people of reputation have a fatal facility 
for falling into it. We ourselves are quite expert 
in discussing the weather. There are all sorts of 
weather, — political, social, commercial. And we 
are adepts in predicting what the weather is going 
to be. We say with great assurance, "Times 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 57 

will be prosperous through this coming year." 
We look over the political field and say with bland 
assurance, " He stands no chance of a reelection." 
We know how to read the face of the sky, but do 
we know how to interpret the pulsations of the 
oceanic current by which the world is being borne 
onward to its predestined goal ? We have our 
tittle-tattle and our gossip and our conversation 
spiced with learning, we read our newspapers 
which are so many cakes of foam blown in from 
the ruffled surface of the sea that is tossed by 
many winds ; but are we able to tell what God has 
been doing with the world, and what he is going to 
do with it in the years that are just ahead of us? 
Among the signs of the times which every 
thoughtful man ought to observe are the titles of 
books. It is not necessary to read books in order 
to know which way the wind is blowing, a glance 
at their titles is sufficient. Let us look at the 
titles of just a few books which have been pub- 
lished within the last ten years. One of the 
greatest of Russians has written a volume which 
is entitled, " What is Religion ? " The most re- 
nowned of all living German professors has written 
a book which is being read by Americans to-day, 
and the title of it is, "What is Christianity?" 
One of the brainiest of all living Scotchmen has 
written a volume entitled, " Can the Old Faith Live 
with the New?" Crossing the Atlantic we find 
books bearing titles equally suggestive. A college 



58 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

president writes a book entitled : " Shall We Believe 
in Divine Providence ? " A professor in a theo- 
logical seminary writes a volume with the title, 
" Can I Believe in God the Father ? " Another 
theological professor writes a volume with the 
title, " Reconstruction in Theology." From New 
England there comes a book, "Old Faiths in New 
Light." And from the West there comes a book 
entitled : "What is Left of the Old Doctrines ? " 

Evidently something has happened. When Chris- 
tian men around the world write books whose titles 
are interrogation points, it is safe to say that 
something has taken place. What is it ? Every- 
body ought to know. It is the duty of every 
professing Christian to know. He ought to see 
very clearly what it is that has happened, else his 
Christian life will be bound in shallows and in 
miseries. The Christian life ought to be a life of 
peace ; but how can a man's heart be at peace if he 
knows that something tremendous has happened, 
but does not know the nature of the event. When 
you are awakened at night by a slight sound, you 
are not at all disturbed if you know what the 
sound is. It may be the dripping of water from 
one of the faucets, it may be the teeth of a mouse 
in the wall, it may be the wind toying with one of 
the blinds ; no matter what the noise is, it is not 
disturbing if you know what it is. It may be that 
it is the crackling of flames — in that case you know 
what to do. But if you cannot tell what it is that 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 59 

is causing the noise, you are both impotent and 
wretched, and sleep becomes impossible. The boy 
who travels down the hall stairs in the dark and 
sees something standing at the bottom of the stairs, 
would not be alarmed if he could see all of this 
object, whatever it is. The reason his heart palpi- 
tates is because he sees a little of it, but not all of 
it. Its edges fade away into the darkness, and this 
gives the boy's imagination a chance to work, and 
his imagination increases the action of the heart. 

And so it is in religious matters. If we do not 
see clearly what it is that has caused this world- 
wide commotion in religious circles, we shall be 
the victims of a vague mistrust and an undefined 
dread, and this alarm will paralyze all the nerves 
of action and close the avenues of peace. Christians 
of all people on earth ought to be positive and 
radiant. They must know themselves and the 
world in which they are living. If they are ner- 
vous and hysterical, shrinking and scared, they will 
not be able to do their work effectively, nor will 
they be able to bear eloquent testimony to him 
who said, " Be of good cheer, I have overcome the 
world." And this state of alarm is all the more 
lamentable just now because we are moving out, 
according to all the prophets, to engage in one of 
the most furious contests known in human history. 
Social and industrial forces have been loosened 
and are working mightily in directions which must 
be curbed if we are to escape catastrophe. Dan- 



60 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

gers vast and terrible are lifting their heads which 
only a church sure of itself can face and overcome. 
The church of this century must be preeminently 
a church of power, and power is always conditioned 
on the clearness of conceptions of fundamental 
truth. Let us then this morning ask ourselves 
this question : What has happened ? What has 
caused the present mistrust and uncertainty in 
the religious world ? If we can find a satisfactory 
answer to that question, we shall have done a good 
day's work. 

Six things have happened. Two of them hap- 
pened long ago, and the remaining four are the 
results of the first two. No one can understand this 
present age unless he knows what happened early 
one Friday morning in the year 1492. A Spanish 
sailor shouted " Land ! " In the summer of that 
year Christopher Columbus with ninety men started 
to sail westward over an ocean which seemed to 
have no western shore. For seventy days they 
have been sailing westward, and the ninety men are 
badly frightened. Columbus has coaxed them, 
pleaded with them, threatened them — and now 
they are on the verge of breaking out in desperate 
mutiny. In order to quiet them, he offers a reward 
to the first man who sights land. There have been, 
as he thinks, indications of land not far away. And 
so when the sun goes down that Thursday evening, 
October 20, 1492, ninety pairs of eyes peer wist- 
fully into the twilight, and later on into the dark- 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 6 1 

ness, eagerly looking for the longed-for shore. No 
ninety pairs of eyes ever stared and strained them- 
selves as did those ninety pairs of eyes on that 
immortal night. It was two o'clock when one of 
the sailors on the Pinta shouted "Land! Land!!" 
I never can read the story without my heart leap- 
ing. That cry ushered in a new age. Ancient 
history ended then ; modern history began. For 
four hundred years the cry has been, " Land ! New 
land ! " New land is what we seek. New land is 
what we find. Up to that time the European 
nations had been travelling eastward. Men went 
back to the old things, to the old monuments, the 
old tombs, the old manuscripts, the old lands. 

But now the current of human thought has 
changed. From this time onward men are to 
search for new things, new truths, new lands — 
and the last four hundred years have been four 
hundred years of exploration. Men have gone to 
the centre of all the deserts, they have climbed to 
the top of all the mountains, they have gone to the 
bottom of all the seas. There are only two little 
spots on the planet which have not yet been ex- 
plored, and they will be mapped before the century 
has run its course. Yes, the cry is, " New land ! " 
The men in the mediaeval ages lived in a world 
comparatively restricted. There was no outlet for 
the human mind, and so the mind worked upward. 
Men built that strange and fantastic palace of syllo- 
gism, argument, proposition, dream, fancy, guess, 



62 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

known as scholasticism. It is a palace built of air. 
But when the Spanish sailor shouted land, the glory 
of scholasticism began to fade. For four hundred 
years men have been saying, " Give us land ! Give 
us something real, substantial, solid. Give us a 
place to stand on, a place where we can build our 
homes, establish our institutions, build up our civil- 
ization." We are all under the sway of the spirit of 
that intrepid Italian, Christopher Columbus. 

And the second event happened only twenty-nine 
years later. With men's faces turned toward the 
future, the question immediately arose: Can a man 
accept the new facts which he finds ? Can he em- 
brace the new truths which he arrives at ? Can he 
confess the new principles which have been revealed 
to him by the experience of his soul ? The question 
was settled at the Diet of Worms. It was settled 
by Martin Luther. He had found out some things 
which he believed to be true, and believing them 
to be true he published them ; having published 
them, he was ready to defend them. But they 
contradicted what had been declared by the past. 
In past councils the church had spoken, and its 
decrees could not be changed. The advocate of 
liberty met the assembled hosts of authority. 
The electors and the princes and the great em- 
peror himself were all present. Over their heads 
there rose rank above rank representatives of the 
most august and mighty hierarchy known to his- 
tory. Bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, cardinals 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 63 

— the whole culminating in the baptized Caesar, 
the Bishop of Rome. The hierarchy says to the 
young man, "Recant," and his answer is, " I will not 
recant unless I am convinced by clear argument." 
All human history has been different since the 
Diet of Worms. Ever since then the mind has 
been free. It has been roaming everywhere. Every- 
thing in the heavens and on the earth and in the 
waters under the earth must be sifted and measured 
and analyzed and weighed. Everything must go 
into the crucible and be tested. Man has the right 
to accept the truth whenever and wherever he finds 
it. We are all under the sway of Martin Luther's 
soul. The great Italian and the great German, they 
walk like mighty spiritual giants before us across 
the centuries, and all our life is different because 
they lived and labored. 

The other four things happened because of the 
work which Columbus and Luther did. And all 
these four things have happened within a hun- 
dred years. Space has been expanded enormously. 
To the ancients the universe was a small affair. 
The sun was only seventy-five miles away. The 
sky was solid, and the stars were brilliants tacked 
to it. The earth was conceived to be the centre 
of all. But in the sixteenth century a Pole by the 
name of Copernicus dethroned the earth. He 
proved that the sun is the centre, and that the 
earth is only one of several planets revolving 
round the sun. A still larger knowledge of the 



64 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

solar system was gained in the next century by 
Galileo and Kepler. But all these three men were 
only boys sitting on the front door-steps of the 
great temple of immensity. Not one of them was 
permitted to go into the temple. It was William 
Herschel who first walked into the temple of 
space. He was the man who made the first great 
telescope, the first man who travelled all the way 
to the stars. On his way outward to the stars he 
doubled the diameter of the solar system by pick- 
ing up a new planet, and when he reached the 
nearest of the stars he informed us that this star 
was two hundred thousand times farther from us 
than the sun. From this star he travelled to its 
nearest neighbor, and the distance was ten billions 
of miles. But from Herschel's day to this the 
astronomers have been going deeper and deeper 
into space. The great telescopes have found 
fifty millions of stars, and the photographic plates 
have found as many millions more. There is not 
one system, there are thousands of systems ; not 
one universe, but many universes. The universes 
lie like islands surrounded by an unmeasured 
sea. Our solar system is only a tiny thing; our 
sun is but a tallow dip. Our little earth, what 
shall we say of it ? It is nothing but a grain of 
sand lying upon a shore that has no bounds ; it is 
nothing but a tiny bluebell blooming under rich 
vegetation on one of the lower slopes of the great 
mountain of God ! 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 6$ 

What must be the effect of all this upon our 
conceptions of God, man, and the world ? What 
shall we think of the earth ? What shall we do 
with the story at the beginning of Genesis which 
speaks as though the sun and the moon and the 
stars had been created to cast light upon this tiny 
speck of matter ? Is that story the na'fve fancy of 
a childlike mind? And what shall we think of 
man ? Is he really great as he has always dreamed 
himself to be ? or is he insignificant in everything 
save in the dimensions of his self-conceit ? Has he 
a right to have any science or any religion in a uni- 
verse so vast ? It is here that we find the cause of 
agnosticism. The agnostic is a man who has been 
struck to the earth by this majestic vision of an 
immeasurable universe. All he can say is: "I 
don't know ! I don't know ! I don't know ! " Or 
as Tennyson has expressed it : — 

" What am I ? 
An infant crying in the night ; 
An infant crying for the light ; 
And with no language but a cry." 

And what shall we think of the story of Christ's 
life and death ? Can we any longer believe that 
God's only son would come to an earth so small 
and live and die for men like us ? In the universe 
which modern astronomy has uncovered it is neces- 
sary to think out the entire Christian religion again. 
Not only has space been expanded, but time has 
been enormously extended. Up to a hundred 



66 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

years ago nearly everybody believed that the earth 
was only six thousand years old, and that the 
entire history of man might be comprised within 
those narrow limits. 

Soon after the middle of the eighteenth century 
there was a physician in Edinburgh, James Hut- 
ton by name. Young Hutton, like many another 
doctor, found it difficult to secure a practice, and 
so he left the city and went to farming. He began 
to study the earth. He became interested in river 
beds, in pits, in hills and mountains. He watched 
the effect of rain and wind and ice, and he said to 
himself, " I think I could account for the present 
configuration of the earth if I only had time 
enough." In the next century the idea was taken 
up by another Scotchman, James Lyell, who stoutly 
maintained that there is no reason why God should 
not have acted through long periods of time in 
bringing the world to its present condition. The 
teachings of Lyell were taken up by Louis Agassiz 
and a score of other great geologists, and now it is 
a most fascinating story which geology has to tell 
us. It and paleontology assure us that man has 
existed on earth for millions of years, that there 
were long ages of animal life before man appeared, 
and unnumbered millenniums of vegetable life be- 
fore there was an animal on the earth, and un- 
numbered aeons when the earth was without form 
and void and existed as star-mist in space. But 
what must be the effect of all this on Christian 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 67 

thought ? If the margin of our Bible says that the 
race is six thousand years old, and if geologists say 
it is older, what is going to become of the margin 
of our Bible ? And what place shall we give to 
Christ in this great unfolding of the race whose 
beginnings are hidden in the mists of an im- 
memorial past ? He seemed sufficient to meet the 
needs of two hundred generations ; but will he be 
sufficient to account for the experience and prog- 
ress of two hundred thousand generations before 
he came ? In a little universe whose horizon was 
narrow and whose sky was low, and whose age 
could be expressed in four figures, Christianity 
seemed ample and sufficient; but hold it up in this 
larger universe, and will it fit ? Is it large enough 
to cover all the newly discovered spaces and the 
newly discovered ages ? Is it adequate for a uni- 
verse whose sky is higher than the highest leap of 
the imagination, and whose horizons are all drowned 
in mist ? Are the statements of theology large 
enough? Are the conceptions of Luther and 
Calvin and Wesley large enough? Are Paul's 
ideas large enough ? Christianity must be thought 
out again. It must be correlated to a universe of 
which our fathers knew nothing. 

Into this enlarged universe a new idea came, the 
idea of development. As soon as men discovered 
the real nature of the earth, they began to ask 
themselves, how did it come to be ? While the 
geologists were asking, By what processes were the 



68 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

oceans hollowed and the mountains built up ? other 
men were asking, By what processes did vegetable 
and animal life assume their present forms ? It 
was in the last half of the eighteenth century that 
a French naturalist, Buffon, suggested the idea of 
transmutation of species. But his suggestion had 
no effect upon the learned world. In 1790 Goethe 
published a most interesting book which he called 
" The Metamorphoses of Plants," in which the 
idea of transmutation of species was still further 
developed. At the beginning of the nineteenth 
century Lamarck and Oken carried the idea still 
further. But the world was not ready to receive 
their ideas. Everybody believed in special creation 
and in the immutability of species. But in the 
thirties a young Englishman, Charles Darwin, 
gifted with most wonderful eyes and the most 
marvellous patience, began to keep a note-book. 
Into that note-book he poured the results of all 
his observations. He took up the idea of the 
transmutation of species, and began to inquire 
the reason for it. For twenty-one years he gath- 
ered material, and when his edifice was completed, 
in the year 1859, ne published "The Origin of 
Species," the most epoch-making book of the 
nineteenth century. Huxley and Tyndall, Lyell 
and Lubbock, and Herbert Spencer in England, 
Haeckel in Germany, Asa Gray and John Fiske 
in this country, came to Darwin's support, and in 
every department of thought the idea of develop- 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 69 

ment is supreme to-day. All leading thinkers 
the world over are evolutionists. There are many 
kinds of them, but the one word is wide enough 
to cover them all. In the hands of masters like 
Drummond and Fiske this idea of development 
becomes one of the most bewitchingly fascinating 
ideas that has ever entered the mind of man since 
Jesus taught his high doctrine of the Fatherhood 
of God. It opens glorious vistas and gives mag- 
nificent visions, and pushes open windows that 
look out upon vast realms hitherto unvisited by 
the most daring imagination. I do not wonder that 
the world has gone after Darwin and accepted the 
principle of development. The universe is now read 
in the light of that idea. Paley, in the eighteenth 
century, compared the universe to a watch, a fine 
piece of mechanism put together and set running 
by the divine watchmaker. But now the universe 
is a flower blooming in the garden of God. Every- 
thing grows : languages, institutions, constitutions, 
governments, religions, races — Man has come up. 
This is why Tennyson can say : — 

u Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower ; but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

But what must be the effect of this on our concep- 
tion of the Christian religion ? If man has come 



JO CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

up from brute-life, is he the creation of God ? and 
if everything is passing from less to more, from 
lower to higher, what becomes of sin ? Was there 
ever a fall ? and if there was never a fall, what is 
the meaning of the death of Christ ? In an age 
which has accepted the doctrine of development, 
the whole teaching of Christianity concerning sin 
and the cross must be reexamined and thought 
out again. 

While some men were working with the uni- 
verse, and other men were working with the rocks, 
and other men were busy watching the transmuta- 
tions of plant and animal life, other men turned to 
the study of history. This is the last of the six 
things which have happened. The historic spirit 
was not born until near the close of the eighteenth 
century. The idea of humanity as an organism, 
passing through regular stages, was first suggested 
by Lessing, but it was Herder who first gave the 
idea amplification. Herder carried the principle 
into language and poetry and government and 
religion. Under his treatment the Bible became 
a new book. Since the days of Herder the old 
historical viewpoint and the old historical methods 
have completely vanished. There are no histories 
written in the eighteenth century which the world 
cares to read save the history of Gibbon. His 
" Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " is the 
only history of the eighteenth century that has 
not been superseded. Herder's idea was taken up 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS yi 

by Schlegel, and worked out in his philosophy of 
history. Hegel took up the idea and also wrote a 
philosophy of history. The idea passed into France, 
and Auguste Comte worked it out in his " Positive 
Philosophy." The idea passed into England and 
inspired Buckle to write his " History of Civiliza- 
tion." The spirit came across the Atlantic, and 
Draper wrote his " Intellectual Development of 
Europe." The product of this historic spirit is 
what is known as historic criticism. All the records 
of the past are being studied from a new viewpoint. 
The human race is now seen to be a unit, and to 
pass through graded stages of development. 

Now when men begin to study history, if they 
wish to cover the entire ground they cannot neg- 
lect the Bible. The Christian religion is an his- 
toric religion. The Old Testament is historic, and 
so is the New. It would be impossible, therefore, 
for the Bible to escape the influence of this new 
historic spirit. And if a man studies the Bible, he 
cannot fail to be impressed by those wonderful 
narratives which we call the gospels. Jesus of 
Nazareth is an historic character, and he must be 
studied from a new viewpoint. It was in the 
year 1835 that a young German professor, David 
Friedrich Strauss, brought out the second volume 
of his " Life of Jesus," probably the most startling 
book produced in the Christian church in the nine- 
teenth century. Strauss was at this time only 
twenty-seven years of age. He had a mind that 



72 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

revelled in negations. He struck at once at the 
miraculous element in the gospels, and denied that 
it is history. His book created a profound im- 
pression. Immediately Neander, Ullmann, and 
Tholuck, and many other distinguished scholars, 
went to work to find out if the things which 
Strauss had said were true. From the days of 
Strauss to the present time " Lives of Jesus " have 
been appearing. Up to the publication of Strauss's 
" Life of Jesus " there had not been written any 
"Life of Jesus" worthy of notice since the days 
of the apostles. Men in the Middle Ages cared 
little for the life of Jesus. Protestantism at first 
was not interested in the gospels. Martin Luther 
began his sermons with the Psalms and ended 
them with Paul's letters to the Galatians and 
Romans. John Wesley was converted by one of 
Paul's letters, and always gave Pauline thought a 
large place in all his sermons. It is only since 
the days of Strauss that preachers have been 
preaching the life of Jesus. Some of you are old 
enough to remember the day when the great words 
in the Christian pulpit were foreordination, pre- 
destination, sanctification — all Pauline words, and 
all of them banished to-day from the Christian 
pulpit. Ministers now are preaching about the 
Beatitudes of Jesus, the Lord's Prayer, the Sermon 
on the Mount, the Parables of Jesus, the Miracles 
of Jesus, the teaching in the upper chamber, the 
words from the cross. A western preacher writes 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 73 

a novel without literary distinction, which has a 
sale of several hundreds of thousands of copies, 
because it deals with Jesus, — " In His Steps." 
What must be the effect of all this ? In the first 
place it is causing the outside world to scrutinize 
the church with new severity. Is the Christian 
church Christian ? Do Christians walk as Jesus 
walked ? These are questions which are sounded 
on every side. And this new revelation which has 
come to us in the study of the man of Galilee has 
caused much heart searching among professing 
Christians. It has begotten in many hearts a 
sense of unworthiness, and has taken away from 
Christians much of the assurance which the church 
once possessed. 

These, then, are the six things which have hap- 
pened. The spirit of exploration and the passion of 
liberty have gone abroad through all the earth, and 
under the influence of that spirit and that passion the 
universe has been immeasurably expanded. Space 
is vaster. Time is longer. The universe is dis- 
covered to be a growing thing. Humanity itself 
grows, and the poet writes science as well as 
poetry when he says : — 

" Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of 
the suns." 

If these are the things which have happened, why 
should anybody be alarmed ? What is there in any 



74 CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 

one of these six facts to cause the slightest uneasi- 
ness ? Why should we be afraid of astronomy or 
geology, or biology or research ? If the astrono- 
mers have made it clear that my Father's house is 
larger than I thought it was, then I shall value still 
more highly the privilege of being counted a child 
of the King. I will say to the astronomers, go on 
and pick up other millions of worlds, for they only 
prove still more clearly the extent of my Father's 
wealth. And if time is as long as geologists say it 
is, then I have a new revelation of God's patience. 
If he can spend so many ages in bringing about 
things to his liking, he will never grow weary in 
the long-drawn work of training and redeeming a 
race even so stubborn and slow as ours. And if it 
be true, as the biologists claim, that everything is 
growing, that humanity passes from lower to higher, 
then I will rejoice with a new joy when I read St. 
John's assertion, "Now are we the sons of God, 
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." The 
latest science gives me larger ground for hope ; it 
lifts my expectations ; it puts a deeper glory into 
my dreams. And if historical criticism has brought 
out into clearer light the face of Jesus, surely I will 
count historical criticism the dearest of my friends. 
When we once come to see what science has ac- 
complished within the last hundred years, we shall 
hold our heads higher as Christians and sing a more 
jubilant song. And when we use the adjective 
" new," we should bear in mind what it is to which 



CAUSE OF THE PRESENT UNEASINESS 75 

the adjective is applied. We sometimes speak of 
new things as though there were nothing left that 
is old. The fact is, everything is old except our 
thoughts. Astronomy is new, but the stars are 
old. We talk of the new geology, but the rocks 
are old. We speak of the new biology, but life is 
old. Men write of the new psychology, but the 
mind is old. We discuss the new theology, but 
God is old. We pride ourselves upon the new 
Biblical interpretation, but the Bible is old. God 
is old. The human heart is old. God and the 
heart belong together. And so in an age filled 
with the wonders of the microscope, and the mar- 
vels of the telescope, and the miracles of the spec- 
troscope, we can kneel down by our bed every night 
and use the same words which our fathers and grand- 
fathers used : — 

" Now I lay me down to sleep ; 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep : 
If I should die before I wake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take." 



IV 



HOW THE OLD CONCEPTION 
OF THE SCRIPTURES DIFFERS 
FROM THE NEW.— Part I 



IV 



HOW THE OLD CONCEPTION OF THE 
SCRIPTURES DIFFERS FROM THE 
NEW.— Part I 

" God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the 
prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the 
end of these days spoken unto us in his Son." — Hebrews i : 1,2. 

When the Westminster divines in the middle of 
the seventeenth century wrote out their Confession 
of Faith, they began by stating their doctrine of in- 
spiration. In their judgment the doctrine of Holy 
Scripture is fundamental to everything else. Their 
reason for thinking so was that the Christian world 
was at that time engaged in a great controversy 
over the seat of authority. What is the seat of 
authority ? The Roman Catholic church answered : 
" It is the church. The church is the interpreter 
of the Scriptures. The Scriptures without the 
church are dead. The Scriptures do not contain 
everything essential to salvation. They must be 
supplemented by tradition, and both tradition and 
the Scriptures must be interpreted by the church." 
This position was vigorously attacked by the Prot- 
estants. "The seat of authority," they said, "is 
the Bible. The Scriptures contain everything that 

79 



SO OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

is essential to salvation. The Bible is to be read 
and interpreted by the individual Christian. What- 
soever cannot be proved by Scripture, cannot be 
forced upon the conscience of Christians." 

A man who would deal successfully with the doc- 
trines of the Christian church at the beginning of the 
twentieth century, must begin as the Westminster 
divines began, with the Scriptures. The doctrine 
of inspiration is in our day fundamental to every 
other doctrine. Ever since the oldest of us were 
born, the Bible has been the storm centre of the 
Christian world. A furious contest has been waged 
around it, and no one can approach it save through 
the smoke of this age-long conflict. The most 
varied and contradictory assertions are constantly 
being made concerning every portion of the Scrip- 
tures, and men and women everywhere are in great 
mental confusion. How widespread this confusion 
is, possibly very few of us imagine. The older peo- 
ple, as a rule, do not realize how disturbing are the 
influences which have been operative upon the minds 
of young men and women for the last twenty-five 
years. New fields of learning have been opened up 
and new studies have been added to the curriculum, 
new ways of thinking and of talking have been in- 
troduced, the result being that our boys and girls 
have difficulties concerning which their parents 
knew nothing. Moreover, there are persons who 
never have intellectual difficulties of any kind. 

It is a matter for constant wonderment, the way 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 8 1 

in which human beings differ from one another. 
Some of us, for instance, could not live without 
books. For us, as for Mrs. Browning, " The world 
of books is still the world." Without our books 
we should know little, and life would be stale, flat, 
and unprofitable. But there are men and women 
who care nothing at all for books. They are intel- 
ligent and on many points well-informed, good, 
sensible, wholesome people, who make good Chris- 
tians and loyal citizens, and yet to them the best 
of books is little better than a bore. They do not 
get their information from the printed volume, 
they seem to breathe it in with the air. The man 
who loves books cannot be persuaded to get on 
without them ; the man who does not love them 
cannot be induced to read them. There are men 
and women who never have the slightest difficulty 
with the Bible. They accept everything it con- 
tains without question, no matter what are the 
contradictions or discrepancies. No matter how 
unsavory certain of the pages, or how incredible 
the stories, everything is quietly accepted without 
reluctance and without a question. Such persons 
are always more or less nettled by their neighbors, 
who have objections and who are troubled by various 
kinds of doubts. But there are other people to 
whom the Bible is a stone of stumbling and a rock 
of offence. They do not know what to do with it. 
Parts of it are so coarse, pages of it cannot be read 
aloud. They do not know what to do with these. 



82 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

They are offended by the atrocities and barbarities 
which are perpetrated under the sanction of the 
Almighty. And as for many of the miraculous 
stories, they seem to be as incredible as the stories of 
Baron Munchausen. And yet the Bible is supposed 
to be God's book. To become a member of the 
Christian church one must accept the Bible. By 
joining the church a man is supposed to say that 
he believes everything in the Bible from lid to lid. 
Small wonder is it that many earnest, con- 
scientious men and women are sorely perplexed. 
Their perplexity rises to the level of an actual dis- 
tress. The Bible is their greatest reason for not 
being church members. They are good people, 
they love goodness, they want to be good them- 
selves, they want to live and work with other good 
people, but they cannot say that they believe the 
Bible. It is a great stone which lies across their 
path. If some archangel from the court of heaven 
would only come down and roll the stone away, 
they feel they could accept with gladness the re- 
sponsibilities of the Christian life. These perplexed 
and puzzled people can be numbered by the thou- 
sands. When Mr. Henry Drummond died a few 
years ago there was found among his papers a great 
mass of letters which he had received from persons 
living in all parts of the world, asking him ques- 
tions concerning the difficulties which they had 
met with in the Scriptures. Henry Drummond was 
known to be an honest man, a man as courageous 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 83 

as he was honest, a man whose soul had all its 
windows open to the light, and so men and women 
in every section of the earth came to him to make 
confession of their inward struggles to reach con- 
ceptions of the Scriptures which would satisfy their 
minds and hearts. 

There are other persons who have no trouble 
with the Scriptures because they do not count the 
Scriptures any longer worthy of serious considera- 
tion. To them the Bible is obsolete. It contains 
a mass of myths and falsehoods, all of which have 
been exploded by the discoveries of science. To 
these people, as to Professor Goldwin Smith, the Old 
Testament is nothing but a millstone around the 
neck of Christians. Some of these persons even 
hate the Bible and never speak of it save in terms 
of indignation and scorn. They have read John 
W. Draper's book on the " Conflict between Science 
and Religion," in which book the writer makes 
science appear as a strong-limbed angel of God, 
whereas religion is always a great ass. A few 
years ago Dr. Andrew D. White, for twenty years 
president of Cornell University, brought out a 
ponderous work in two volumes of five hundred 
pages each, entitled, "Warfare of Science with 
Theology in Christendom." Dr. White has been 
an omniverous reader, and into his big volumes he 
has gathered the long, sad story of the conflict 
which has raged between leaders of the Christian 
church and leaders in the world of science. He 



84 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

shows how at every point, for nineteen hundred 
years, the discoveries of science have been resisted 
by priests and preachers, and how science has been 
obliged to make its way against the fiercest and 
most determined opposition of the professed de- 
fenders of the Christian faith. In astronomy and 
anatomy, in biology and medicine, in geography 
and geology, in chemistry and physics, in psychol- 
ogy and physiology and paleontology, it has been the 
same sickening, distressing story. The disciples 
of Jesus of Nazareth, with the Bible in their 
hands, have endeavored to overturn the truths of 
science by quotations from the Scriptures. A 
young man, after reading these two volumes of 
Dr. White's, is very likely to say, " What a lot of 
fools the Christian church has produced, and how 
can a man have respect for a book which has been 
for so many centuries the instrument of bigotry 
and the weapon by means of which men have 
attempted to put an end to all intellectual prog- 
ress ! " There never has been an evil that has not 
been defended by quotations from the Scriptures. 
Mormon ism, slavery, tyranny, witchcraft, war, 
cruelty — all these have been sanctioned and proved 
justifiable by the Bible. Shakespeare puts into the 
mouth of Bassanio, in the " Merchant of Venice," 
words which indicate how keenly the great poet had 
felt the tragedy of this use of Scripture : — 

" What damned error, but some sober brow 
Will bless it, and approve it with a text." 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 85 

What has made this long-drawn tragedy of Chris- 
tian history possible ? How does it happen that 
every scientific man for nineteen hundred years has 
been resisted and hated by a large number of the 
leaders of the Christian church ? Does the fault lie 
in the Scriptures ? If so, then the Scriptures are 
indeed fit for the fire. Or is the mischief caused by 
an erroneous conception of the Scriptures ? If so, 
then let us have a new conception of them, and let 
us have it at once. There is a new conception of 
the Scriptures, and it is rapidly working its way 
into the consciousness of the whole Christian 
world. It was accepted long ago in Germany; it 
triumphed in England a generation ago in the 
midst of great convulsions and shakings of the 
heavens and the earth. During the last twenty- 
five years it has been taking possession of the 
mind and heart of the thoughtful people of the 
Christian church in America. The process has 
been attended here, as elsewhere, by rumblings 
and mutterings and an occasional explosion. 

It is not easy for the world to work itself out of an 
old conception into one that is new. Ages of tran- 
sition are always ages filled with earthquake and 
thunder. It is not easy for any man to give up a 
conception in which he has lived the larger part of 
his life, and make himself feel at home in a concep- 
tion entirely different from the old one. The pas- 
sage from a faith that is traditional to a faith that 
is vital is always more or less painful as well as 
hazardous. 



86 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

Years ago when I was a student in the seminary, 
one of my classmates left the recitation room one 
day with tears running down his cheeks. Our pro- 
fessor in Hebrew had been saying certain things 
about the Old Testament which were a great sur- 
prise to this young man. My friend had been 
brought up on a western farm. He had spent a 
goodly portion of his life in hoeing corn. While 
hoeing corn a certain conception of the Bible had 
crystallized in his mind, which he supposed to be 
the very truth of God. The Bible to this young 
man was very much what the book of Mormon was 
to Joseph Smith. According to Joseph Smith's 
story the book of Mormon was found already writ- 
ten, carefully preserved in a sacred box. The 
leaves of the book were plates of gold bound to- 
gether with three gold rings, and on the top of the 
book there was a pair of supernatural spectacles 
by means of which it was possible for Joseph Smith 
to interpret the mysterious language in which the 
divine book was written. According to our farmer 
the Bible had been written in heaven, bound in 
heaven, and dropped down in some mysterious way 
upon this earth. When the Hebrew professor told 
him the exact facts in the case, this young man 
became unnerved. With distress written on every 
feature of his face, he said, " I must get out of 
here, I shall be an infidel if I stay," and in a few 
days he left the school. 

That mental distress has been the experience of 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 8? 

thousands of professing Christians within the last 
quarter of a century, Christians both young and old. 
The old conception seems so satisfactory and so 
complete that when one discovers it can be held no 
longer, his soul goes forth wounded and naked in 
search of a new doctrinal home. It is because of 
this unsettlement of mind that many persons feel 
it to be advisable to keep certain aspects of the 
truth hidden. "What is the use," they say, "in 
talking about things which only disturb and un- 
settle ? The old conceptions are good enough. 
They were good enough for our fathers, and they 
are good enough for us. Why run the risk of mak- 
ing a person sceptical by calling in question the 
beliefs upon which he has built his life ? " 

It is a very plausible plea, but both dangerous and 
wicked. For every one person who is made a 
sceptic by knowing the entire truth concerning the 
Bible, a hundred people are made sceptical by the 
silence of religious teachers. We Christians are 
supposed to be lovers of the truth. We profess to 
follow him who said, " I am the truth ; " shame on us 
then if we are ever afraid of the truth ! The man 
who holds back the truth for fear he is going to 
disturb somebody's faith, has in him the heart of a 
coward. It does people good to be unsettled when- 
ever they have settled down in a falsehood. Hu- 
manity gets on only by the upsetting of people. 
Not a step of progress is possible without some- 
body being hurt. If the leaders of the Christian 



88 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

church had only been bolder in speaking out the 
truth as it is, many a young man would now be in 
the ministry who has been lost to the ministry for- 
ever, and thousands of men and women who are 
now hopelessly estranged from the Christian church 
would be enthusiastic workers in it. It was because 
Christian teachers allowed the rank and file of 
Christians to go on believing a theory of inspiration 
which is untenable that Robert G. Ingersoll was 
able to wield his enormous influence. If professing 
Christians had been instructed in right ways of 
thinking of the Scriptures, they would never have 
been disturbed by anything which Ingersoll ever 
said. 

What has led to this new conception ? The 
whole movement of modern thought. We are liv- 
ing in a new universe. The heavens are new, and 
so is the earth. We have a new knowledge of the 
body, a new knowledge of the mind, a new knowl- 
edge of the past, a new knowledge of everything. 
We do not look at any object as our fathers did. 
We cannot conceive the Bible as they conceived it 
fifty years ago. The conception of the Bible which 
is now dominating the thought of the most intelli- 
gent portion of the Christian world is as different 
from the conception which was held by our fathers 
as the medicine of to-day is different from the medi- 
cine of the days of Andrew Jackson. I do not 
mean to say that the old conception has vanished 
altogether from the earth. Vestiges of it will 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 89 

undoubtedly remain for centuries to come. Old 
errors are long-lived; they do not die in one genera- 
tion or in ten. I have sat at the table of a Presby- 
terian elder, a man of intelligence and wealth, who 
did not hesitate to assure me that he did not accept 
the Copernican astronomy, and was willing to live 
and die in the faith that the Bible is right when it 
says that the earth stands still and that the sun 
moves. 

All thinking men in all departments have helped 
the world along to this new conception, but especial 
honor is due to a particular class of men known as 
the higher critics. The term " higher criticism " 
is one often met with in current literature, and 
the precise meaning of it ought to be in the posses- 
sion of every member of the Christian church. It 
is a technical expression, and no one can know its 
meaning without instruction. Each class of schol- 
ars has its own particular dialect. Doctors when 
they are alone speak a language peculiar to them- 
selves. The very simplest of diseases have a ter- 
rible sound when spoken by their lips. Lawyers 
also have a lingo of their own. We ordinary people 
do not understand them when they are speaking 
legally. Professional students of the Bible also have 
their own peculiar speech, and people who are not 
Bible students do not understand their learned 
phrases until they are explained. It would seem 
that anybody could tell the meaning of higher criti- 
cism. The adjective is surely simple ; it means 



90 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

loftier or more elevated. Criticism ! ah, do we not 
know what that is ! We have been criticised all our 
lives. It is a nagging, biting, contemptible habit 
of faultfinding. And higher criticism would be 
more contemptible and more unendurable than 
any other sort, because of its pretentious lordliness. 
The higher critics, then, according to this inter- 
pretation, are lordly faultfinders. Stand back, 
gentlemen, dare you touch the Scriptures ? Who 
are you that you should find fault with the word of 
God, and insult us all by your lordly pretensions 
and your haughty assertions ? 

But higher criticism does not mean that at all. 
Criticism does not mean faultfinding. Criticism is 
nothing but careful study. I may skim a book, 
or I may read it critically. When I read it critically, 
I do not read it to find fault with it. I read it with 
discrimination and with a purpose to know just 
what the book means. When I write down my 
judgment of the book, what I write is criticism. 
Every sentence of it may be praise, but it is 
criticism none the less. A critic then is not a 
faultfinder but a careful student. But why higher 
criticism ? Because there are two kinds of Bible 
study. A man may study tne text of Scripture, 
or he may study the thought of it. There are 
thousands of manuscripts, and among them no two 
agree. There are tens of thousands of verbal 
variations ; letters, syllables, words, are dropped 
out or transposed, sentences are more or less 



_*. ■■ ^ * * 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 9 1 

mangled by the carelessness of scribes, so that all 
these manuscripts must be compared one with 
another. By this comparison scholars are able to 
make out what was approximately the text written 
by the author. Men who do this sort of work are 
textual critics. They are sometimes called lower 
critics because they deal simply with the body of 
the Scriptures and not with their soul. Men like 
Lachmann, Bengel, Tischendorf in Germany, and 
Tregelles, Westcott, and Hort in England, and a 
whole host of others have given a large part of 
their life to the study of the text. 

After the text has been made out, then the work 
of other men begins. When we have found the text, 
the next question is, What does it mean ? When 
was this thing said ? What was the significance of 
it ? What did it mean to the men who heard it ? 
What application has it to us ? A man who engages 
in this kind of study we call a higher critic. Higher 
criticism then is nothing more than the careful his- 
torical study of the Bible. Higher critics are nothing 
but men who carefully study the Scriptures by the 
most approved scientific methods. They are men 
deserving of our deepest gratitude and our highest 
praise. Higher criticism is often a bogy to certain 
people, but it ceases to be a bogy when you get it 
out into the light where you can see what it is. 
Higher critics are frequently sneered at as enemies 
of the human race, but many of them are God's 
noblemen when you once know who they are. 



92 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

I have sometimes heard people say that they did 
not believe in higher criticism when I was certain 
they did not know what they were saying. It is easy 
to use words without knowing what they mean. I 
have heard a man say he did not believe in doctors, 
but when his child fell sick at midnight he tele- 
phoned for the doctor. I have heard people say 
they did not believe in medicine. They spoke 
scornfully of drugs. But if such a person should 
have his foot crushed he would want a surgeon, and 
when the surgeon began his operation the patient 
would be willing to be drugged. When people say 
they do not believe in medicine or drugs, they speak 
unadvisedly with their lips. They do not believe 
in using medicine as it is sometimes used, or they 
do not believe in certain doctors who are quacks. 
And if that is what one means, why not say it ? 
It is wicked for a Christian man or woman to use 
the English language in such wholesale and sweep- 
ing ways. If a man does not believe in certain 
higher critics, he has a perfect right to say so, for 
all higher critics are not alike. 

In the realm of Biblical scholarship, as in every 
other realm, there are faddists and extremists and 
fanatics, men who lose their head and say and write 
things quite ridiculous. But this does not prove 
that all higher critics are fools, or that higher 
criticism is silly or false. The higher critics have 
been at work on our Scriptures for over two 
hundred years, and they have made the Bible 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 93 

a new book for the Christian world. All honor to 
them, heroic, patient, long-suffering men, devoted 
to the truth, laboring ofttimes amid misunderstand- 
ing and denunciation, in order that succeeding 
generations may have a fuller and more satisfying 
knowledge of the things which have been written 
for our consolation ! 

But in all this let us bear in mind that it is our 
conception and not the Bible which is new. We 
think differently concerning the Bible, but the 
Scriptures themselves remain unchanged. Noth- 
ing substantial has been cut out of the Bible, and 
nothing has been put into it since the days of 
Luther. We have a new science, but the old 
material universe has not been changed one iota ; 
and so we have a new conception of the Bible, but 
the Bible itself is what it has been from the begin- 
ning. I overheard two aged men talking one day 
about the Revised Version. Both of them seemed 
very wise, and one of them especially spoke with 
deliberation and gravity. Among other things 
he said, " I do not wonder that the Bible is con- 
sidered a good book, it ought to be good ; they 
keep cutting things out and putting other things 
in ; in order to keep it up to date, they bring 
out a new version every little while. There is no 
reason why it should not be fine." 

I suppose there are people who think that as a 
result of all the discoveries made by recent scholar- 
ship the Bible has been amended, expurgated. Such 



94 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

persons are mistaken. Our King James's version 
dates from the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. About twenty-five years ago a new version 
was made. Many of the greatest scholars of the 
world were engaged in this revision. But when 
they had completed their work the old book was 
practically unchanged. Not one book was dropped 
out of the big volume. If any one alarmed, thinking 
that possibly one of the books has escaped, should 
plunge into this book, he would hear a cheery 
voice saying what Paul said to the Philippian jailer, 
" Do thyself no harm, we are all here ! " Not a chap- 
ter was dropped out all through the Old Testament 
or the New. Not a verse was expunged which 
affects any cardinal doctrine of the Christian 
religion. A few verses here and there were re- 
moved, because there were good reasons for think- 
ing that these verses had slipped into the body of 
the text from the margin of some ancient manu- 
script. But, generally speaking, the Bible to-day 
is just what it was in the days of the Reformation. 
So long as men continue to think about any- 
thing at all, they will think about the Bible. 
What men think about the Bible does not change 
the nature or the structure of the Bible itself. In 
the second century of our era a famous astronomer 
by the name of Claudius Ptolemy worked out an 
interpretation of the heavens, whereby the earth 
was made the centre of the solar system, with the 
sun and planets revolving round it. That inter- 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 95 

pretation swayed the world for fourteen hundred 
years. It made no difference to the sun. Ptolemy 
had a wrong conception, but the sun kept right on 
shining. He flooded every day with light, and 
went out into the fields every summer and aided 
the farmers in bringing in their crops. The 
Copernican theory now holds sway ; but the sun 
shines no more brightly in these modern days than 
it did when Claudius Ptolemy was counted the 
greatest astronomer in the world. The Bible is 
the sun in the firmament of thought. It has 
shone for ages and will shine on forever. No mat- 
ter what man may think of it, it will go right on 
shining. Upon the path of the last man who 
builds his home upon this earth the old book will 
cast a sacred light. To-day and to-morrow, and 
down to the last syllable of recorded time, this 
great book will be a lamp to men's feet and a light 
to their path. 

We have then the old Bible and the new concep- 
tion of it. We are now ready to consider the ques- 
tion : In what respects does the new conception 
differ from the old ? 

According to the new conception, we must cut 
off some of the Biblical fringes. There have been 
things bound up with our Bibles which have not 
been a part of the Scriptures. In many of our 
Bibles, for instance, you will find certain dates 
printed in the margin. Those dates are worthless. 
They embody the results reached by a great scholar 



96 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

who lived two hundred and fifty years ago, James 
Usher. After a deal of labor he proved to his 
own satisfaction that the world was created four 
thousand years before the birth of Christ. Very 
unfortunately his calculations were printed in the 
English Bible, and in time people made no dis- 
tinction between the chronology of Usher and 
the writings of the prophets. Usher was only 
a fallible man : how fallible you may see from 
the awful advice which he gave Charles I in re- 
gard to breaking the word which he had given to 
the Earl of Strafford. The scholarship of Usher 
has been superseded long ago, and in rubbing out 
his dates we do not touch the Scriptures. 

But more than the dates of Usher must go. 
Many of the headings of the books of the Bible are 
erroneous. Those headings were not put there by 
the authors of the books. They express the conclu- 
sions reached by scholars of various ages. For in- 
stance, Genesis is called the First Book of Moses, 
Exodus, the Second Book of Moses, and so on. 
Those headings do not appear in the original 
Hebrew. They were introduced in the Greek 
translation of the Scriptures by some Alexandrian 
scholars in the third century before Christ. Because 
those Alexandrian scholars called those books the 
Books of Moses, it does not follow they were written 
by him. In the New Testament the letter to the 
Hebrews is ascribed to the apostle Paul. The letter 
itself does not say Paul wrote it ; there are good 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 97 

internal evidences for thinking he did not write it. 
The heading is not a part of the letter. We have a 
right to throw the heading away if for any reason 
it seems desirable to do so. 

The interpretations also of certain books must 
be thrown aside. If you will turn to the Song of 
Songs, you will see that each chapter is preceded 
by a brief interpretation of its contents. Accord- 
ing to that interpretation, the book narrates a 
dialogue between Christ and his church. This 
interpretation had its birth in the allegorical or 
mystical school of interpretation. For many hun- 
dreds of years Bible students took delight in read- 
ing all sorts of beautiful and mystical meanings into 
the text of Scripture. Every sentence was sup- 
posed to have a deep and glorious meaning. The 
most commonplace and prosaic statements were 
filled full of spiritual truth. But the mystical in- 
terpretation of Scripture has long since been super- 
seded. There is no reason whatever for thinking 
that the man who wrote the Song of Songs was 
thinking about Christ or his church. The Song of 
Songs is an Oriental love poem. According to 
the story, a beautiful Jewish girl falls in love with 
a poor shepherd, and she is true to him amidst 
all temptations, refusing to be bought by the 
gold of a king. The Song of Songs gains im- 
mensely when we throw away the mystical inter- 
pretation of it. 

Modern scholarship reminds us that we must 

H 



98 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

not put all the Bible books on the same level. 
The scholars, of course, have always known this, 
but the people have been prone to forget it. This 
has been especially the case since the Reformation. 
In the fires of that furious contest all these books 
were melted and fused, and until recently the 
Bible has been looked upon as though it were one 
solid mass of truth, every part of it equally divine, 
and every sentence of it equally authoritative. But 
we err greatly whenever we consider the Bible 
thus. These books are not on the same level. 
For some reasons it is a misfortune that we call 
the Scriptures "the Book." The Jews had a long 
name for the Old Testament. They called it the 
" Law, the Prophets, and the Writings." They 
gave the Law a sacredness and an authority which 
they never gave the Prophets. And they gave the 
Prophets a place of superiority which they denied 
to the Writings. They would not admit that 
Esther was equal to Genesis, or that Nehemiah 
was on a level with Isaiah. Nor have the wisest 
scholars ever admitted that it is right to put the Old 
Testament on a level with the New. Fifteen hun- 
dred years ago Augustine declared, "It is wrong- 
ing the New Testament if the Old Testament is 
placed on a level with it." Not only are the vari- 
ous books to be regarded as possessing different 
degrees of authority, but we must make distinctions 
in the same book, for in the same book there is 
often a temporal element running side by side with 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 99 

the eternal. Jesus used the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures with the greatest freedom. He would take 
up two sentences, hold to the one and throw the 
other away. " It has been said by them of old 
times, thus and thus . . . but I say unto you." 
Thus freely did he deal even with the things that 
were written in the Law. All the ritual legislation 
became obsolete long ago. The civil legislation 
was forever abandoned when the New England 
theocracy failed. There are moral sanctions in 
the Old Testament which a progressing race has 
left behind. 

The new scholarship makes it clear that the 
Bible was not produced instantaneously. Like all 
things else which have ever been upon this earth, 
it grew. Through at least fifteen hundred years 
it kept on growing. And in it, therefore, we have 
the advancing stages of an unfolding life. A par- 
ticular race beginning near the bottom climbs 
little by little in the face of tremendous obstacles 
from the darkness of barbarism into a glorious 
light. Now in all growing life there must be that 
which is immature, crude, mistaken. If a race 
grows as a man does, there must be first childhood 
and then youth. What a race does and thinks as 
a child, it will cease to think and do when it be- 
comes a man, for a race like a man puts away 
childish things. If you are ever tempted therefore 
to make sport of the crudities of the Old Testa- 
ment, bear in mind that without these crudities 



tofC. 



100 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

the fuller life would have been impossible. We 
are living in a scientific age when men are in- 
tensely interested in origins. Why should you 
push the Old Testament away with scorn when it 
contains the story of the origins of our religion ? 
A book is not to be despised simply because parts 
of it have been outgrown. I shall never forget 
the day when I learned to read a certain sentence 
in the primer, " An old ape, can he hop ? " My 
boyish heart leaped with joy when I achieved that 
glorious victory. I do not despise that primer, for 
by mastering just such sentences I became able in 
time to read the philosophy of Hegel, the tragedies 
of Shakespeare, and the gospel according to St. John. 
The Christian church is coming to see that the 
Bible is not a book of science. There are differ- 
ent spheres of knowledge, and the Bible is supreme 
in only one of them. The men who wrote the 
Scriptures knew nothing of science as we under- 
stand it to-day. They were ignorant of physiology, 
geology, geography, biology, zoology, astronomy. 
As Drummond has well said, if the Bible had 
intended to teach any science whatever, it would 
have taught medicine first of all. And everybody 
knows that the science of medicine is not taught 
in the Scriptures. It is because men have per- 
sisted in the belief that the Bible does teach 
science that the awful tragedy of which Dr. White 
has given us the history was made possible. 
Augustine said to the scientists of his day, "If 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 10 1 

you assert that people can live on the other side 
of the earth, you give the lie direct to the Holy 
Ghost." Both Calvin and Luther made fun of 
Copernicus, Luther calling him a fool because he 
contradicted the book of Joshua, in which it is 
expressly declared that the sun moves while the 
earth stands still. It was as late as 1768 that 
John Wesley asserted that if we give up our belief 
in witchcraft, we must give up the Bible. Through 
a large part of the nineteenth century it was stoutly 
maintained that the early chapters in Genesis are 
scientifically true. All sorts of expedients were 
adopted in order to harmonize science with religion, 
Genesis with geology; but all these attempts failed. 
And all such attempts must forever fail, for the 
Bible is not a book of science, but a book of religion. 
Modern scholarship has also compelled us to 
give up the doctrine of verbal inspiration. Accord- 
ing to that theory, the Bible is inerrant — there is 
no admixture of error in it. It is an infallible book. 
This theory is no longer tenable. The Bible con- 
tains errors. There are errors in the text. The text 
in many places is undoubtedly corrupt. There are 
errors in translation. The Jewish historians occa- 
sionally slipped. The conceptions of the physical 
universe held by the men who wrote the Scriptures 
are not the conceptions which we know to be true. 
It is not wise, therefore, to use the word "infallible." 
If you use it, you are under the necessity of ex- 
plaining what you mean. The Roman Catholic 



102 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

church in the year 1870 laid down the doctrine of 
papal infallibility. It has been obliged ever since 
to deal in explanations. According to some of 
the best Roman Catholic scholars the Pope has 
never yet spoken infallibly. That is, he has never 
yet spoken ex cathedra on a question of faith or 
morals for the guidance of the entire Christian 
church. His encyclicals are addressed simply to 
different sections of the church, and hence may be 
superseded by some future Pope in some coming 
generation. If we say that the Bible is infallible, 
we use a word difficult to manage. The Bible 
is not infallible in its words, for no translation 
is faultless. It is not infallible in its language^ 
for though the style is good, it is not perfect. 
It is not infallible in its facts, for an historian 
occasionally slips. It is not infallible in its theo- 
ries, for its theories of the physical universe are 
mistaken. It is not infallible in its arguments, 
for some of its arguments are weak. It is not 
infallible in its moral sanctions, for the Hebrews 
undoubtedly sometimes confounded their own im- 
pulses with the voice of God. It is not infallible 
in the expectations of even its greatest men, for all 
the apostles expected Jesus to return within their 
own lifetime. In what sense, then, is the Bible an 
infallible book ? If a man earnestly wants to find 
his way to God, the Bible will surely help him find 
that way. In that sense, and in that sense only, 
have we any right to say the Bible is infallible. 



V 



HOW THE OLD CONCEPTION 
OF THE SCRIPTURES DIFFERS 
FROM THE NEW. — Part II 



V 



HOW THE OLD CONCEPTION OF THE 
SCRIPTURES DIFFERS FROM THE 
NEW. — Part II 

" Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable." 

— 2 Timothy iii : 16. 

The Bible is at present the subject of world- 
wide discussion. Even the Roman Catholic 
church, the most conservative of all the branches 
of Christendom except the Greek church, has 
recently appointed a Biblical Commission, because 
the Pope asserts that the time has come for the 
Apostolic See to declare what must be infallibly 
maintained by Roman Catholics, and what reserved 
for further investigation or left to the judgment of 
each individual. 

In my last sermon I stated that modern scholar- 
ship insists upon making a distinction between the 
text of Scripture and traditions which have crept 
into our Bible in the form of dates, headings of 
books, and interpretations. It also insists that all 
books of the Bible are not of equal value. The 
Old Testament is not on a level with the New, nor 
are the several books of either Testament equally 
authoritative. Ecclesiastes is not on a level with 

105 



106 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

Isaiah, nor is 2 Peter on a level with the gospel 
according to St. Mark. Modern scholars empha- 
size the fact that the Bible is a record of a revela- 
tion that is progressive. There is a long distance 
between Samuel hewing Agag to pieces and Jesus 
praying for his enemies upon the cross. In a 
long-drawn process of development we must ex- 
pect crudities and immaturities in the earlier 
stages. The Bible is no longer considered an 
authority in science. It is a book of religion. Its 
aim is to reveal God. It does not pretend to 
teach man science. And whenever it has been 
compelled to do so, it has proved unequal to the 
task. Finally, the Bible is now confessed to have 
errors in it. The men who wrote it were not 
infallible. The history is not at every point 
accurate. Scientific conceptions are not always 
true. The morality commended cannot be com- 
mended in the light that has come to us in Jesus 
Christ. I hope you have all been able to follow 
me without reluctance thus far, for these five 
things are only the commonplaces of the world of 
scholarship. All Bible scholars of any standing in 
Europe, England, and America have acknowledged 
these five things long ago. 

But a conception of the Bible which admits these 
five things is one which differs as widely from that 
entertained fifty years ago as the Copernican as- 
tronomy differs from the Ptolemaic. A tremendous 
revolution has taken place, and the reverberations 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS io? 

of it are still in the air. The battle was not nearly 
so terrible in this country as it was in England. 
We are a busy, rushing people, and do not give the 
attention to problems in the world of thought 
which is given on the other side of the sea. 

In the year i860 a volume appeared in England 
entitled, " Essays and Reviews." It was written by 
seven distinguished educators and religious leaders, 
among them being Dr. Temple and Professor Jowett. 
The Essay upon the Bible was written by Professor 
Jowett, and in the essay he gave this advice, " In- 
terpret the Scriptures like any other book." It would 
be impossible to describe the storm which this book 
occasioned. The whole religious part of the Eng- 
lish nation was thrown into a paroxysm of terror. 
Papers and magazines were filled with the most 
intense and almost furious discussions, and the 
authors of the books were denounced as infidels 
and enemies of the church. 

In the year 1862 Bishop Colenso brought out a 
book upon the Pentateuch. In his work in South 
Africa he had come to the point where it was no 
longer possible for him to teach the book of Genesis 
in the way in which it had been taught in England 
since the days of the Reformation. With great fear- 
lessness he wrote down and printed his conclusions 
concerning that book. A storm immediately burst 
upon his head which seemed likely to* drive him 
from the English church. But Colenso was a brave 
man as well as an honest one. The old explanations 



108 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

having once become shams in his eyes, he cried 
out, "Shall a man speak lies in the name of the 
Lord ! " and dared to stand without flinching 
against the assaults of the great majority of his 
fellow-members of the English church. 

But the world does move in spite of all the exer- 
tions of the people who want it to stand where it is. 
The leaven once inserted, worked with prodigious 
power, and twenty-five years later eleven clergymen 
of Keble College, the very fortress and home of 
conservatism, brought out a volume entitled, " Lux 
Mundi," in which the new conception of the Scrip- 
tures was boldly expounded. One of the chapters 
in this book was written by Charles Gore, who has 
recently been elevated to the bishopric, and in that 
chapter the writer made one concession after an- 
other, coming at last to the conclusion that there 
is no authoritative definition of inspiration which 
can be imposed upon the conscience of the members 
of the Anglican church. " Lux Mundi " appeared 
in 1889, and four years later Professor Sanday de- 
livered his Bampton lectures on Inspiration, in which 
he said things which would have caused an earth- 
quake a quarter of a century before. But so 
rapidly had the Christian world advanced that his 
lectures created little more than a passing ripple. 

Somewhat later Professor Sayce of Oxford, 
the most distinguished Assyriologist in England, 
brought out a volume which had been looked for- 
ward to by conservative scholars with the most 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 109 

ardent anticipations. But, alas! when the volume 
appeared it was discovered that even Professor 
Sayce himself had become convinced that the 
history in the book of Daniel is erroneous, that 
some of the facts in the book of Esther cannot be 
admitted, that the dates in the book of Ezra can- 
not be harmonized, and that several of the insti- 
tutions and stories in the book of Genesis are of 
Babylonish origin. And so it may be said that all 
Bible scholars the world over, both radical and con- 
servative, have given up the old conception of verbal 
inspiration. 

The question now arises, Where are we ? If we 
admit these things, what then? To one brought 
up under the old conception it might seem that we 
have no Bible left. How mighty is the revolution 
which has been wrought in the mind of Christen- 
dom within the last half century can be seen by 
an examination of books that were written and 
sermons that were preached since many of us were 
born. Dean Burgon, in 1861, said in Oxford : 
" The Bible is the very utterance of the Eternal. 
It is as much God's own word as if high heaven 
were opened and we heard God speaking to us with 
human voice. Every book is inspired alike, and is 
inspired entirely. The Bible is filled to overflowing 
with the Holy Spirit of God : the books of it, and 
the words of it, and the very letters of it." That 
was the teaching in England. And Dr. Hodge 
expressed the teaching in America when he said : 



IIO OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

" The books of Scripture are one and all, in thought 
and verbal expression, in substance and in form, 
wholly the word of God, conveying with absolute 
accuracy and divine authority all that God meant 
to convey, without human additions or admixtures. 
Infallibility and authority attach as much to the 
verbal expression in which the revelation is made 
as to the matter of revelation itself." According, 
then, to the theory of verbal inspiration, the Bible is 
indisputably the word of God, and endowed with 
all the perfections of that word; it is exempt from 
error in doctrine, in history, and in science. 

Whence did this theory come ? We inherited it 
from Romanism, and Romanism got it from Juda- 
ism. It was an idea which arose and gradually 
took shape in the period between the return from 
the Babylonian captivity and the coming of Jesus. 
After the days of Ezra there was no prophet of 
commanding stature and piercing insight in Israel. 
The writings of the prophets of the sixth and 
seventh centuries, together with the books which 
were ascribed to Moses, were about all that was 
left of the Jerusalem of the olden time, and these 
writings fell into the hands of men who regarded 
them with a reverence which became at last 
idolatry. The books ascribed to Moses were re- 
garded with special veneration. Rabbis began to 
say that the Pentateuch was dictated to Moses by 
God himself, that Moses was an amanuensis, that 
while he wrote there was a total suspension of his 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS in 

human faculties, he responding to God's influence 
just as a lyre responds to the touch of a musician; 
and that God dictated to Moses the account of his 
own death. As time went on this theory became 
more and more extreme. Every jot and tittle of 
the Scriptures was inspired, the most commonplace 
sentences were supposed to have marvellous and 
divine meanings in them. By and by the name of 
God became so sacred the rabbis would not speak it. 
The result is that nobody to-day knows how the 
ancient Hebrews pronounced their name of God. 
For four hundred years the rabbinical spiders spun 
cobwebs all over the Scriptures, and those slender 
threads little by little hardened into steel, so that 
when Jesus appeared the Hebrew people were im- 
meshed in a network of tradition. 

This idea of verbal inspiration blighted the spirit- 
ual life of the nation. The Pharisees became wor- 
shippers of a book instead of worshippers of God. 
Christ speaks with hot indignation of the blindness 
and stupidity of the religious leaders of his day. 
"You men," he said, with scorching scorn, "strain 
out a gnat and swallow a camel. You men make of 
no effect the word of God through your traditions." 
Because of this mechanical and narrow conception 
of inspiration, the religious leaders of Israel had 
become pettifoggers and pedants. They washed 
the outside of the platter and left the inside un- 
clean. They would not put their sandalled feet 
upon the marble pavement of Pilate's Judgment 



112 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

Hall, because to touch Roman marble would defile 
them ; but they would stand there on God's own 
ground and shout out of throats filled with venom : 
" Crucify him ! Crucify him ! " 

This doctrine of verbal inspiration, elaborated by 
the Jewish rabbis, was taken up in the second cen- 
tury by several leaders in the Christian church. 
The Christian church found herself confronted by 
a hostile world. Against her were arrayed the 
wealth and the learning and the power of the 
nations. The only thing she had was the Scrip- 
tures, and it was natural she should give to these 
an appreciation that was likely to run beyond all 
bounds. Tertullian and Irenaeus and Origen fell 
into ways of talking about the Scriptures closely 
resembling the phraseology of the Jewish rabbis. 
We find Ambrose saying, "Moses opened his 
mouth and poured forth what God said to him." 
Other men went still farther. Little by little there 
grew up in the church the idea that every word in 
the Scriptures is the eternal word of God, and that 
in this book there can be no error whatsoever. In 
the process of time the Bible fell into the back- 
ground, and the church came to the front as the 
authoritative teacher of men. The Bible was not 
conceived to be any less divine than it always had 
been, but it was simply ignored. It became a sort 
of idol, something to be looked at with reverence, 
but not to be touched. A few men through the 
Middle Ages studied the Scriptures and loved them, 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 113 

but the great masses of the people never saw the 
Bible and knew nothing whatever about it. At the 
time of the Reformation both in Germany and in 
England large numbers of priests knew almost 
nothing of the Scriptures. 

In the sixteenth century Martin Luther broke 
the Roman Catholic church in two. He studied 
the Bible for himself, and saw at once that the 
larger part of what Rome had been saying was 
pretence and innovation and tradition. Luther, 
therefore, treated the church with great freedom, 
criticising the Pope, calling attention to the errors 
which had been sanctioned by church councils. 
Finding deliverance by believing in Jesus Christ, 
he became also very free in his treatment of the 
Scriptures. No book in the Bible had significance 
for him which did not tell him of Jesus. He tossed 
aside the book of Jude as worthless, he cared little 
for the book of the Revelation, saying that it was 
not apostolic. In great scorn he said the epistle 
of James was an epistle of straw, that is, it is an 
epistle fit only to be burned. Martin Luther was 
too free in his dealings with the Scriptures. He 
was impulsive, and often said and did things which 
cannot be defended. The church would have suf- 
fered loss if all the books of the Bible which Martin 
Luther did not like had been cast out of it. Calvin 
and Zwingli were also free in their treatment of 
the Scriptures, but not so reckless as Luther. 

But in the seventeenth century there began to 



114 0LD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

spring up that same mechanical view of inspiration 
which had dominated the Jewish church and which 
had been held theoretically for a thousand years by 
the Catholics. The process was a natural one, I 
am not sure but that it was an inevitable one. The 
seventeenth century was a century of storm and 
struggle. Protestants were beset on every side. 
They had cast aside the authority of the church ; 
it was natural that they should turn for authority 
to the Bible. The attacks of the Jesuits were ter- 
rible. The Jesuits pointed with pride to an in- 
fallible church ; it was natural that the Protestants 
should point with pride to an infallible Bible. The 
Jesuits claimed that humanity needs a supreme 
tribunal — such a tribunal as the church. The 
Protestants pointed to the Scriptures, " Here is the 
supreme tribunal, here is the tribunal which makes 
no mistakes ! " With the Jesuits on the one side 
and the rationalists on the other, it is not surpris- 
ing that the Protestant theologians dwelt more and 
more on the perfections of the Bible. In the fur- 
nace heat of the greatest conflict which the world 
has ever known all lines of stratification were 
obliterated, and the Bible became one solid mass 
of lustrous gold. The style of the language was 
perfect — any suggestion of imperfection was blas- 
phemous. Even the vowel points in the Hebrew 
had all been inserted by inspiration. Every part 
of the Scripture was of equal divinity and of equal 
authority, for God wrote it all. At the close of 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 115 

the seventeenth century a distinguished scholar 
did not hesitate to say, " Not a word is contained 
in the Holy Scriptures which is not in the strictest 
sense inspired, the very punctuation not excepted." 
To such lengths will any theory run when it falls 
into the hands of men who lack insight and 
common sense. 

If you ask why so absurd a theory held such 
long-continued sway over the minds of men, the 
answer is that the theory of verbal inspiration is 
the simplest of all possible theories, and the most 
easily managed. If you can say that God wrote 
this book from the first word to the last, you say 
something which a child can understand, and so 
long as you believe this you know exactly where 
you are. If anybody says there are mysteries in 
the Bible, you can reply there are mysteries in 
nature ; if some one says there are contradictions 
in the Scriptures, you can say there are contra- 
dictions everywhere. If some one says there are 
pages here which are unsavory or which have 
apparently no significance, you can say that that 
is because we do not discern the hidden, spiritual 
meanings. If some one says there are moral 
atrocities sanctioned in the Bible, you can reply 
with indignation, " Who are you that you should 
find fault with God ? " A tight, cast-iron theory 
is exceedingly satisfactory, because so long as you 
have it you know where you are, and any other 
theory, no matter what it may be, is loose and 



Il6 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

gets you into trouble. If you say there is a human 
element in the Bible, then who is going to tell 
which is human and which is divine ? If you say 
there are errors in the Bible, how is a man to 
know what is error and what is truth ? If you say 
that the Bible writers were mistaken in scientific 
matters, the question comes, May they not have 
been mistaken in everything ? And so men say in 
their haste : All the Bible or none. I will swallow 
it whole, or I will have none of it. You say there 
are errors in it, then it is all a falsehood ; if these 
men were mistaken, then we have no revelation, 
we might as well burn up the Bible, the church 
is doomed to destruction, the world is going to the 
devil, let us all sit down and cry ! That is the 
way men speak when they speak foolishly. 

But an idea must not be given up simply because 
it is hard to manage. We must use the powers of 
our mind when we study the Bible, just as we use 
them when we study anything else. We must 
discriminate, we must think, we must reason. 
One reason why the theory of verbal inspiration 
was dominant so long was because it ministers to 
man's laziness. A man can say very reverently : 
"This is God's word," and then let the dust 
settle on the pages of it. Many a Christian has 
kept the Bible in his house just as though it were an 
old horseshoe — certain to bring good luck. A man 
does not reverence the Bible simply by saying 
beautiful things about it, he reverences it most 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 117 

when he goes into it most deeply, questions it, 
wrestles with it, compels it to give up its deep 
secrets. Nor should we allow ourselves to be 
stampeded by any man who tells us that the Bible 
contains errors. There are not so many errors in 
the Bible as some people imagine. Ever since the 
German historian Niebuhr constructed the history 
of early Rome, and demonstrated the unhistorical 
character of certain Roman stories, there has been 
a school of scholars inclined to doubt everything. 
The history of the criticism of Homer is very 
interesting. Distinguished scholars came to the 
conclusion that Homer never lived and that Troy 
never existed ; but in the fulness of time a German 
grocer of Indianapolis, named Schliemann, went 
over to Asia Minor and dug up Troy. Everybody 
believes in Troy now. It was once supposed that 
a man by the name of Menes was ruler of Egypt 
several thousands of years before Christ. Then 
the time came when nobody believed that Menes 
ever lived — he was a creation of the imagination. 
By and by Professor Petrie dug up the mummy of 
the man. Everybody now believes in Menes. Not 
long ago many scholars were saying that the art of 
writing did not exist previous to 600 B.C., and that 
therefore many of the things stated in the Old 
Testament are discredited. But only the other 
day they dug up a copy of a code of laws estab- 
lished by Hammurabi, king of Babylon, who lived 
and reigned before Abraham came into Canaan. 



Il8 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

Do not be frightened when people tell you that 
the Bible is full of errors. There are a few errors, 
but the Bible is not full of them. It is well to bear 
in mind also that the errors in the Bible are only 
incidental. There are errors and errors. Some 
errors are vital, other errors are insignificant. If 
I am preaching a sermon on the text, " Children, 
obey your parents," I might mispronounce a word, 
it would be an error ; and I might make a mistake 
in a date, which would also be an error; and I 
might say that I was quoting from Tom Moore, 
when I was really quoting from Robert Burns ; 
and I might use an illustration founded on an 
erroneous conception of chemistry or biology. But 
errors such as those would not invalidate the force 
of my argument. My truth would still be truth, 
and my sermon would still be true, and these errors 
would only be tiny knots in the texture of my dis- 
course. All the errors in the Bible need never 
disturb you in the least, if you really are in earnest 
in striving to find your way to God. Dr. Luthardt 
says that the little discrepancies are only pebbles ; 
they do not block the way. A distinguished 
Scotchman, Dr. Dods, says that the errors are like 
so many cracks in a glacier — a man whose mind is 
bent on his goal takes them in with his stride ; a 
trifler may dip his foot into one of them and get 
a twisted ankle. 

The collapse of the old dogma of verbal inspira- 
tion has been caused by a study of the Scriptures. 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 119 

We never know what is going to happen when 
men really study the Bible. Men did not study 
the Bible, and the Roman Catholic church grew 
mightier and more autocratic and more corrupt. 
Luther studied the Bible, and Protestantism was 
born. For the last hundred years men have been 
studying the Bible as it was never studied since 
it was written. Men know to-day as they never 
knew before how these writings came to be. 
When a young man goes to a theological school, 
he hears things which startle and discomfit him. 
Most young men go to the school of theology with 
a pagan conception of the Bible as a divine book 
which has dropped down out of heaven as the Koran 
is said to have done in the legend. With this idea 
in his mind he at once enters upon a process of 
disillusionment. He is told that there are a hun- 
dred and fifty thousand variations in the text of 
the New Testament. He discovers that when the 
New Testament writers quote the Old Testament, 
they do not quote it accurately. He learns to his 
amazement that the rabbis wrote the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures in consonants only, and that the 
vowels were inserted centuries after these rabbis 
were dead, so that in some cases it is impossible 
to tell the meaning of the words. The consonants 
in the word "bed " are the same as the consonants 
in the word "staff," and we shall never know 
whether Jacob leaned on the top of his bed or on 
the top of his staff. 



120 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

And then the history of the canon of Scripture 
surprises him exceedingly. These books grew up 
in the most haphazard way imaginable ; they came 
together how and when nobody knows. Some books 
had difficulty in getting in. Ecclesiastes and Esther 
came within one of being left out of the Old Testa- 
ment, 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John and the book of 
Revelation had a difficult time to get into the New 
Testament. The student is surprised to find that 
in the oldest manuscript of the New Testament 
which has come down to us there is an epistle of 
Barnabas, also a piece of writing known as the 
Shepherd of Hermas. He finds also that in the 
Alexandrian manuscript, one of the oldest of all, 
there are two Letters of Clement which in some 
mysterious way have disappeared from the New 
Testament as we have it to-day. 

And when our student studies more deeply, he 
is astounded to find that the Hebrew historian 
can slip, and that Hebrew historians use docu- 
ments just as Gibbon and Ranke and the other 
historians do. He is amazed to find that even the 
apostles were mistaken in expecting Jesus to come 
back in their own lifetime, and he is dumfounded 
to find that even the great Paul in the greatest of 
his chapters, the fifteenth of 1 Corinthians, em- 
bodies this error of judgment, for does he not say, 
"We shall not all sleep"? A theological student 
at the end of the first year of his seminary course 
is the most demoralized individual to be found on 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 121 

this earth. His early conception of the Bible has 
been torn down all the way to the cellar, and he 
is obliged to build up a new conception from the 
foundations. And the struggle through which a 
theological student must go is an experience which 
must come to every Christian who studies and 
thinks. Many Christians do not like to be thus 
shaken and unsettled and disturbed, but there is 
no possible escape. It is only through struggle 
that we reach larger truth. 

" Not a truth has to art 

Or to science been given, 
But brows have ached for it, 
And souls toiled and striven." 

The old conception is vanishing from the earth, 
and let all the members of the Christian church 
rejoice. The doctrine of verbal inspiration was 
not a part of the Scriptures. It was nothing but 
a tradition of men. Harnack is right when he 
says that no other remnant of Romanism has 
hindered the growth of Protestantism as this has 
done. It was a silly superstition, a veritable rep- 
tile in the garden of the Lord. Because of this 
dogma of inspiration, Christianity in the popular 
mind has been arrayed against science, and young 
men everywhere are inclined to think that men of 
science have more truth than the Christian church. 
Christianity has also been arrayed against progress. 
Fifty years ago there were ministers all over the 
country defending slavery and quoting from this 



122 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

book. And the result was that Wendell Phillips, 
a true servant of God, and scores of other noble 
men, were driven into an attitude of hostility to 
the Christian church. Every man who has ever 
attempted to do anything for the emancipation of 
woman has been cudgelled with texts from this 
book. And so Elizabeth Cady Stanton and scores 
of other noble women have been led to despise the 
Bible and to fear the Christian church as an op- 
pressor of their sex. It has arrayed Christianity 
against humanity ; the darkest blot in the history 
of New England is the hanging of nineteen men 
and women accused of witchcraft in Salem. What 
made that awful tragedy possible ? Nothing but 
the literal reading of the words in Exodus, " Thou 
shalt not suffer a witch to live." Hundreds and 
thousands of men and women have been hung 
and burned because Christians have supposed that 
that sentence expresses the eternal will of God. 
Nearly a hundred years after the Salem tragedy 
John Wesley declared that we must give up the 
Bible if we give up our belief in witchcraft. And 
it has helped to estrange the wage-earners from 
the Christian church. 

The doctrine of verbal inspiration gave Charles 
Bradlaugh his magnificent opportunity in England 
of ridiculing Christianity. And what Charles Brad- 
laugh did in England Robert G. Ingersoll did in 
the United States. So long as men held the old 
conception, there was no answer to Bradlaugh and 



Old and new conceptions 123 

Ingersoll. Each man would quote the most savage 
things said in the Old Testament, and then ask his 
audience the question, " How do you like a God like 
that ? " It has also estranged thousands of the most 
cultivated people in Christendom from the Chris- 
tian church. Men and women from our colleges and 
seminaries all over the country never go to church. 
In many of the most cultivated homes the Bible 
is never read. One reason is that these people 
versed in literature, more or less acquainted with 
Egyptology and Assyriology, and supposing that 
the Christian church still clings to the conception 
of fifty years ago, believe that Christian ministers 
are belated and the Christian church is a fossil. It 
is high time, therefore, that it be shouted from the 
housetops that the doctrine of verbal inspiration 
is dead. The Christian church does not teach it. 
The Christian church does not believe it. 

Let us now consider the gains of the new con- 
ception. At first it seemed as though we had lost 
everything. So it seemed to the good people who 
were first told that the earth moves. It seemed to 
introduce an element of uncertainty into all life. 
According to the old conception the earth rests on 
the back of an elephant, the elephant stands on a 
tortoise, the tortoise swims on a sea. That seemed 
substantial. Men shuddered as they thought of 
the earth hanging on nothing. Calvin brought out 
the ninety-third psalm and proved that Copernicus 
was wrong. " The world also is stablished, that 



124 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

it cannot be moved." But we who live to-day 
feel more secure than we should feel if the earth 
were resting on an elephant. The world is, in- 
deed, established, and nothing can move it out of 
the orbit which God has ordained for it. It is 
established in motion, and in moving it is at rest. 

We are now delivered from the awful fear of a 
conflict between science and religion. So long as 
we held the old conception, we never knew on 
going to bed what might appear in the morning 
paper which would unsettle the foundations of our 
faith. But now that we know that the Bible does 
not teach science, we are no longer afraid of con- 
flict. No biologist will ever overturn the parable 
of the Good Samaritan, and no zoologist will ever 
undermine the parable of the Prodigal Son. No 
astronomer will ever take the lustre from the words, 
" God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son." No paleontologist will ever take 
from our lips, "Our Father who art in heaven." 
No discoverer or explorer or inventor will ever 
tarnish the glory of the truth that Jesus Christ 
came into the world to save sinners. 

The Bible now is a human book. It lives and 
moves. It thrills, it burns. So long as it was a 
book dictated, it was to many as cold as starlight. 
It is no longer an arsenal filled with weapons with 
which to batter down our ecclesiastical foes. It is 
a living book which came up out of the hearts of 
living men, the blood of men is in it, the warmth 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 125 

of their body is on it, men who were tempted in 
all points as we are, men who could slip and stum- 
ble, men who did not know everything. The world 
wants a human Bible just as it wants a human 
Jesus. The New Testament labors in season and 
out of season to make Jesus human. He is a 
baby, a boy, a young man ; he is hungry, thirsty, 
disappointed, surprised, indignant. He asks ques- 
tions, he learns, he grows. The New Testament 
makes it clear that Jesus was human. The 
Roman Catholic church took away his humanity, 
elevated him, made him austere, august, haughty, 
mighty. The result was the human heart was left 
hungry, and so many women began to speak to 
Mary, the sweet-faced, bright-eyed Jewish girl, — 
Jesus' mother. They spoke to her and asked her 
to speak to Jesus. And by and by Mary was 
elevated. She became less and less human ^- less 
of the Jewish girl, more of the goddess. And 
when at last she was enthroned in the heavens, 
men and women began to speak to the saints, — 
men and women of our flesh and of our blood, — 
they spoke to them and asked them to speak to 
Mary, that Mary might speak to Jesus. The 
human heart cries out for a human Saviour, and 
so the human heart demands a human Bible. The 
modern conception makes the Bible human. The 
prophets are doing the world more good to-day 
than they have ever done since they spoke their 
message. There are more preachers preaching 



126 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

from the Hebrew prophets now than at any other 
time within the history of the Christian church. 
Higher criticism has made the prophets live. 
And because this is a human book, it is going 
to be studied by and by in all seminaries and 
colleges. When men learn that it was not dic- 
tated, but that it came up out of the human heart, 
they will want to know it. 

It is a great book. The old conception did not 
do it justice. We now see how great it is. It has 
a scorn of details. It does not attempt to teach 
science. It teaches us God. It cares nothing for 
authorship ; it does not tell us the names of the 
authors of many of the books. When it gives an 
author's name, it tells us nothing about him. It 
cares nothing for dates, the dates are all jumbled. 
It cares only for the supreme things. It was little 
men who made it a little book. It has great poe- 
try in it. At first it seemed almost incredible that 
the Bible should contain poetry. Poetry to many 
minds seemed something frivolous, not sufficiently 
dignified and awful for the language of God in 
dealing with serious matters. And because men 
were not willing to admit that it had poetry in it, 
they got themselves and the church into no end 
of trouble. "The stars in their courses fought 
against Sisera." That has the genuine Shake- 
spearian swing and sweep. Suppose you should 
make prose out of it, and ask, How can the stars 
fight ? — would they use bows and arrows, or 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 127 

Mauser rifles? Or take this, "The hills melted 
like wax at the presence of the Lord." Turn that 
into prose, and ask, How can hills melt ? it must 
have been a miracle ! Or take this from the book 
of Joshua, " Stand still, O Sun, upon Gibeon ; 
and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the 
sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the 
people had avenged themselves upon their foes." 
That is great poetry, quoted from an old volume of 
Jewish poems collected by a man named Jasher. 
But the mediaeval church takes that beautiful poem, 
crushes it into prose, and the Pope and cardinals 
order Galileo, who has discovered that the sun 
cannot stand still, to come from Florence to Rome 
and to get down on his knees and say this, " I, 
Galileo, being in my seventieth year, and being a 
prisoner and on my knees and before your emi- 
nences, having before my eyes the holy gospel 
which I touch, abjure, curse, and detest the error 
and the heresy of the movement of the earth." 
The old man was a coward ; but do not blame him 
too severely, for he felt on his cheek the heat of the 
flames which had burned Bruno only thirty-three 
years before. Oh, the tragedy of it ! The church 
of God acting the fool like that ! And all because 
it could not distinguish poetry from prose. 

Everybody nowadays admits that there is poetry 
in the Bible, but is there also fiction ? Many per- 
sons would at once say, No, how could there be 
such a thing as fiction in the word of God ? Fiction 



128 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

deals with that which has never been. Surely it 
would be unworthy a place in the religious guide 
book of the world ! Now the only way to tell 
whether there is fiction in the Bible or not is to 
read the Bible. 

When we open the Bible to the book of Job, 
we read the story of a man who was very rich. 
He had seven thousand sheep and three thou- 
sand camels and five hundred yoke of oxen and 
five hundred she-asses and seven sons and three 
daughters. His wealth was complete. On a cer- 
tain day a man comes rushing in, saying that the 
oxen and asses have been carried off by the 
Sabeans, and that he alone has escaped to bring 
the news. Before he has finished another man 
rushes in, announcing that the lightning has 
struck and burned up all the sheep and all the 
servants except himself only. Before he has 
finished another man rushes in, saying that all 
the camels have been carried off and all the 
servants save himself alone. And while this man 
is yet speaking another man comes in and says 
that all Job's sons and all his daughters have been 
killed. Does not that sound like fiction ? At the 
close of the book we read that because Job did that 
which was right in the eyes of God, he had fourteen 
thousand sheep instead of seven thousand, six thou- 
sand camels instead of three thousand, one thousand 
yoke of oxen and one thousand she-asses instead 
of five hundred. In other words, because he had 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 129 

been good his wealth was exactly doubled. This 
sounds like fiction. Why not call it fiction ? 

We open the Bible again at the book of Jonah. 
Jonah is a prophet, and he is ordered to go and 
preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. 
Instead of going east, he goes directly west. A 
storm comes up at sea, the superstitious sailors 
throw him overboard and he is swallowed by a fish. 
In the belly of the fish the runaway prophet writes 
a finished poem. When he gets on land he makes 
his way to Nineveh, a city containing at least seven 
hundred thousand people, and in the streets of this 
city this wandering Jew shouts : " Repent ! Repent ! 
Repent ! " The king of Nineveh hears him and 
puts on sackcloth and sits down in ashes. Every 
member of the court does the same, every man 
and every woman in Nineveh does the same. They 
even put sackcloth on their horses and their cows 
to show that the repentance of the city is com- 
plete. But Jonah is disgusted because the city 
has repented. God causes a gourd to grow up 
over the prophet's head. It grows up in a night, 
and God destroys it in the morning. Jonah, the 
man who would not pity Nineveh, has great pity on 
the gourd. That sounds like fiction. Well, why 
not call it fiction ? 

Somebody says, That would not be right, for the 
book is sober history. How do you know it is ? 
Who says it is history ? The Bible never says so. 
The book of Jonah itself does not say so. Christ 

K 



130 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

never said so. Some man said so, and some other 
man repeated what he said ; but it is only a tradi- 
tion of men. It was a long time before many 
Christians would allow a novel to come into their 
home. It will be a long time before all Chris- 
tians will be willing to admit fiction into the Bible. 
Nevertheless it is there. Some one says, " Would 
God use fiction?" Indeed he would. 

If a vote should be taken among Christian people 
on the question as to what book should be added 
to the Scriptures if any addition could be made, 
a large majority would undoubtedly vote in favor 
of Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," which is fiction 
pure and simple from beginning to end. God has 
used that work of Bunyan's in a most marvellous 
way. He made use of the novels of Dickens 
to bring about great reforms in England. He 
has used " Black Beauty" to create tenderness 
for animals. If he uses fiction among English- 
men and Americans, why should he never have 
used fiction among the Jews ? 

But some one says that Jesus quoted this book 
as history. How do you know he did ? He quoted 
it, but by his quotation we are not driven to infer 
that it is history. Every religious teacher draws 
his illustrations from books of poetry and from 
books of fiction as well as from books of history. 
I am constantly taking my illustrations from Shake- 
speare. Cordelia and King Lear, Rosalind and 
Jaques, Portia and Shylock, Romeo and Juliet, 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 131 

Othello and Desdemona — these are among my 
dearest friends. I quote their words just as I 
should quote the words of historic people. I 
should not hesitate to say in a sermon that " Just 
as the witches in ' Macbeth ' poured various ingre- 
dients into a cauldron in order to form a hellish 
broth, so do evil spirits throw wicked thoughts and 
wicked feelings into human hearts, causing a hell 
broth to boil and bubble there." I hope no man 
would go away and say, " That minister is supersti- 
tious, he believes in witches." Now if you allow 
me, a religious teacher living in the twentieth cen- 
tury, to draw my illustrations from fiction, why not 
give Jesus of Nazareth the same privilege ? 

There is a further question, Is there such a 
thing as a myth in the Bible ? Some one may hold 
up his hands in horror at this and say : " Now, 
please don't ! It is bad enough to have poetry and 
fiction in the Bible; but if you make out that a part 
of the Scriptures is myth, then the sacred book 
must go." Let us see in the first place what a 
myth is. Some people do not know. They think 
that a myth is a lie. A myth is nothing but a 
story that has come down from an immemorial 
past. It is a story, the author of which is unknown, 
the origin of which no one can ascertain. Are there 
any such stories in the Bible ? We cannot tell 
by theorizing, we must read the Bible and find out. 
We open the big book, and on the very first page 
of it we read that God created the earth and the 



132 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

heavens in six days, and then rested. That sounds 
like a story. It will not do to say that he created 
the world in six ages, for the word "day " does not 
mean age — it means a day of twenty-four hours. 
The Bible at the very beginning asserts that the 
heavens and the earth and man were all created 
inside of a week. We turn the page and we read 
of the creation of woman. The man falls asleep, 
God takes a rib from his side, and out of this rib 
creates a woman. That sounds like a story. In 
the third chapter we read of God walking in a 
garden in the cool of the day. A man and a 
woman have done wrong. They hide themselves. 
A snake has been talking to them. It all sounds 
like a story. If we should meet with it anywhere 
else, we should know it was a story. Why, then, if 
we find it in the Bible should we say that it is 
science or that it is history ? Some one may say, 
" But would God use a story ? " Indeed he would 
— at least he does. 

Mothers are the great story-tellers of the world. 
They feed their children upon stories. A child 
loves nothing else so much as a story. " Tell me 
another one, mother ! " The child will listen until 
the mother grows weary. "If you will be good, 
to-morrow I will tell you another story." It is the 
greatest reward that a child can have. The story- 
telling power is built up in mothers in order to 
meet the story hunger in the child heart. Now 
all this is of God. And if God allows mothers to 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 133 

bring up their children on stories, I do not think 
he would hesitate to use stories himself in the 
training of a world. 

And who are we, believers in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, that we should have such an antipathy to 
stories ? Jesus was always telling stories, and that 
is why men and women hung upon his words. He 
knew how to reach and hold the child which is in 
every man. One day a crowd surrounds him, eager 
for more stories, and so he begins : " A certain man 
had a hundred sheep. One of them gets away, 
and the shepherd brings it back. Then he calls his 
neighbors to rejoice with him because the lost sheep 
is found." — "Tell us another one," the people said. 
"A certain woman had ten pieces of silver, and she 
lost one of them. She got out her broom and lit 
her candle and looked the house over until she 
found it, and then she called in her neighbors to 
rejoice with her." — "Tell us another one." — "A 
certain man had two sons. The younger of them 
said, Father, give me the portion of thy substance 
that falleth to me, and not long afterward the son 
went into a far country." If there are stories in 
the New Testament, why should we be scandalized 
by stories in the Old ? Surely we shall not object 
to stories simply because they are old. In other 
words, why should we be so hostile to myths? 
A myth is as good as a parable, and both of them 
can be used to the glory of God. 

We are now ready to answer certain questions. 



134 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

Is the Bible God's word ? That is not a good title 
for the Bible. When you call sixty-six books the 
word of God, you say something which is open to 
serious objection, and which leads to countless mis- 
understandings. God's word is in the Bible ; but 
many things in the Bible are not God's word. The 
lie told by the serpent, the foolishness spoken by 
Job's friends, the cry of Jeremiah, " O Lord God, 
thou hast deceived me!" — these and much else 
are not the word of God. Jesus Christ is the word 
of God. " In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God." And 
it is this word which speaks softly and intermit- 
tently in the Old Testament, more clearly and more 
gloriously in the New. We see gleams of it in the 
prophets and in the psalms ; it blazes out in the 
gospels. 

Is it right to say that God wrote the Bible ? 
No, he did not write it. Every page of it was 
written by human fingers. The Bible was written 
by man. The lights and the shadows of his moods, 
the depression and rapture of his spirit, play over 
its pages. Its contents came up out of the cavern- 
ous depths of the human heart. The light that 
lights every man that comes into the world came 
up out of the heart. In the Bible we see how 
this light struggles with human ignorance and 
sin, until at last it comes out victorious in the 
life of Jesus of Nazareth. Are we to believe 
when a Bible writer says, "Thus saith the Lord," 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 135 

that he is accurately reporting in every case 
something which God actually said ? No. The 
Hebrews, like all other men, sometimes misunder- 
stood God. Even the greatest of the apostles does 
not hesitate to say, "We see through a glass 
darkly." If a man who has seen Jesus of Nazareth 
near the Damascus gate speaks of seeing through 
a glass darkly, surely it is not unfair to men who 
lived a thousand years before Jesus came, to say 
that they also saw through a glass darkly. How 
are we to know then whether the Lord said a thing 
or not ? We can tell only by bringing it and read- 
ing it in the light of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the 
image of God, and everything in the Old Testament 
must square with his disposition and temper. On 
a certain occasion John wanted to call down fire 
upon some Samaritans. He wanted to follow the 
example of Elijah. Jesus reprimanded him thus, 
" You know not what spirit you are of." 

Is the Bible infallible ? I should not use that 
word. It is too pretentious a word for men like us 
to use. It is better to say that the Bible is useful. 
It was written by honest men. It does not deceive. 
If you say that a book can be trustworthy even 
though it has errors in it, you make no mistake. 
Our senses are trustworthy, nevertheless our eyes 
occasionally deceive us. So also do our ears. But 
it is true none the less that our senses are trust- 
worthy, and we are willing to rely upon them 
every day of the week. There are slight errors in 



136 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

the Scriptures, but the Scriptures can be trusted. 
Men are trustworthy, although they are not infal- 
lible. I know men whom I would trust to the end 
of the day, but I do not know a man who has not 
erred and who may not err again. Why not be 
more modest and be content with the language of 
Scripture ? 

Paul does not claim that the Bible is infallible. 
He says, " Every scripture inspired of God is profit- 
able." That is, it is useful. What a contrast that 
is to the language which we use ! If you say that 
the Bible is infallible, somebody will begin to offer 
objections, and he may trip you. But if you say 
that the Bible is useful, no one can successfully 
deny that. Paul does not say it is useful for every- 
thing. He carefully defines the field inside of 
which the Bible is of use. He says it is useful for 
teaching, for correction, for rebuke, for instruction 
which is in righteousness ; that the man of God 
may be complete, completely furnished for every 
good work. It is best to use the language of Scrip- 
ture. In the words of the writer to the Hebrews, 
" God in old time spoke to the fathers in the 
prophets by divers portions and in divers manners." 
Sometimes the portion was very small, at other 
times it was larger. In some pages there is very 
little bread to eat, in other pages there is bread and 
to spare. 

Is the Bible inspired ? It is. How do we know ? 
Because it inspires. These writings are the most 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 137 

inspiring writings in the world. How could they 
inspire if they were not inspired ? It is not neces- 
sary to prove their inspiration by picking out 
isolated texts. Let us come out under the open 
sky, and unroll history before us, and see the world 
as one vast plain. See the wondrous panorama ! 
Behold the different nations, tribes, and peoples 
living their busy lives, building cities, carrying on 
trade, formulating philosophies, worshipping at 
altars. And there, in the midst of the busy pic- 
ture, is a Semitic tribe which for some reason has 
an idea that it is intrusted with a mission. It 
believes that through it all the nations of the 
earth are to be blest. In some way it has got 
the idea that God is righteous, and that man must 
be like him, and that character is the one supreme 
thing of value upon earth. In customs and man- 
ners, in institutions and language, this tribe is 
very much like the tribes by which it is sur- 
rounded. There are endless resemblances and 
similarities, but this tribe, for some reason, holds 
itself aloof from the other tribes, and pushes its 
way up against nature worship, against polytheism, 
against the countless abominations which drift in 
upon it from the surrounding countries. When 
it receives a story from a neighboring tribe, it 
cleanses it. Century after century this tribe holds 
itself aloof, consecrates itself to a set of ideas, 
clings to the belief that a covenant has been made 
between it and the Almighty. I call this inspira- 



138 OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 

tion. In its religion there are many things which 
remind one of the religions of the surrounding 
peoples, but every religion of every other people 
is tainted. The religion of this tribe is never 
tainted. This tribe is limited in knowledge; it 
is often crude in its conceptions, immature in its 
virtues and graces, but its temple is never polluted. 
The centre is always kept clean. That is inspira- 
tion. And more than this, this tribe has a genius 
for hoping. It projects upon the clouds of the 
future an ideal figure. Over the head of every 
king it sees the head of a better king, and over 
the head of every prophet it sees the features of a 
greater prophet. Generation after generation the 
eyes of its great men discern the face of one who 
is to overtop Moses and the kings. This must be 
inspiration. Century after century the men of this 
tribe have comforted one another by saying : " Some 
day, some time, it will be well." And lo ! one morn- 
ing there is a new babe in Bethlehem. Is the Bible 
inspired ? Of course it is. By their fruits you shall 
know them. The Bible lies at the foundation of 
the Christian world. Compare the Christian world 
with the Mohammedan world or the Confucian. 
Lay England by the side of Turkey. Lay Ger- 
many by the side of India. Lay the United States 
by the side of China. A book must be inspired 
that inspires nations to live nearer to God. 

Is the Bible unique ? Is it different from all 
other books that have ever been ? It is. Inspira- 



OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS 139 

tion was not confined, of course, to the Jews. God 
has access to every heart. But no other tribe ever 
took God in as the Hebrew people did. There 
have been isolated mountain peaks in Asia, but 
see this long mountain range culminating in Jesus 
of Nazareth. Men may quibble about this text or 
the other text, but there is no disputing the rise 
and the moral supremacy of the Hebrew people. 
This thing was not done in a corner. There has 
been a mighty historical movement, and out of 
this historical movement there has come a glori- 
ous revelation of the character and purposes of the 
Almighty. If God has not spoken in this move- 
ment, he has never spoken at all. It is only people 
who do not know the other Bibles of the world who 
place them on a level with our own. Max Miiller, 
professor of Sanscrit at Oxford University, edited 
the sacred books of the East, and in his Preface he 
says, " Readers who have been led to believe that 
the sacred books of the East are full of primeval 
wisdom and religious enthusiasm, will be disap- 
pointed on consulting these volumes." And Pro- 
fessor Monier Williams, another of the greatest of 
Oriental scholars, says, " Place the sacred writings 
of non-Christian systems on the left side of your 
study table, but place your own Holy Bible on the 
right side, all by itself, all alone, with a wide gap 
between." Sir Walter Scott was right when he 
said to Lockhart in his dying hour, "There is 
but one book, the Bible." 



VI 
THE DEITY OF JESUS. — Part I 



VI 

THE DEITY OF JESUS. — Part I 

" Who do men say that the Son of man is ? Who say ye 
that I am ?" — Matthew xvi : 13, 15. 

It was near the city of Caesarea Philippi, in the 
northern part of Palestine, in the midst of a pagan 
population, in some secluded spot far removed from 
the curious eyes of the Scribes and the hostile ears 
of the Pharisees that Jesus propounded to the 
twelve men who had been with him from the be- 
ginning this surprising question, "Who do men 
say that I am?" Simon Peter, who always acted 
as spokesman for his brethen, gave in substance 
this reply, "Men are not agreed in their opinion 
concerning you ; some say one thing, and some say 
another. But they are all agreed on one point, 
they all say you are a great man, worthy to be 
ranked among the very greatest of the prophets." 
And the answer fell like a shadow across the 
Master's face. And then, looking earnestly into 
the eyes of the Twelve he put this question, 
"Who say ye that I am?" And again it was 
Simon Peter who made the reply, "Thou art the 
Messiah, the Son of the living God." And the 
answer fell like a sunbeam across the Master's 

143 



144 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

face. " Blessed art thou, Simon, out of men like 
you I will build my church, and the forces of 
destruction will never overcome it." 

From the day of this conference at Caesarea 
Philippi down to the present day there have never 
been in this world but two opinions concerning 
Jesus of Nazareth. It seems, I know, that there 
have been hundreds of different conceptions of his 
person, but all these hundreds can be reduced to 
two. According to one opinion, Jesus is a man, a 
great man, truly wonderful, but only a man, a 
bright and shining light like John the Baptist, 
a sensitive and tender-hearted patriot and martyr 
like Jeremiah, an intrepid messenger from the 
courts of heaven like Elijah, a beautiful Heraclitus 
or Socrates, a noble Seneca or Epictetus, a Pales- 
tinian Confucius or Buddha, very great and very 
wonderful, but still a man. According to the 
other opinion he is the Messiah, the desire of the 
nations, the consummator of history, the one who 
was to come, the Son of the Eternal, the only Son 
of God, unparalleled, unapproached, unapproach- 
able, unique, unlike any person that has ever been, 
or that will ever be. These are the two conceptions 
of Jesus, and besides these two there is none other. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson held the first opinion. 

u I am the owner of the sphere, 
Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 145 

Caesar, Plato, Jesus, Shakespeare — there they 
stand, all on the same level ; all of them men of 
genius, men of power. Charles Lamb held the 
other opinion. " If Shakespeare should come into 
the room," he said, "we should rise to greet him; 
but if that Person should enter we should fall on 
our knees and kiss the hem of his garment." 

From the beginning the Christian church took 
the higher of these two conceptions, and she has 
steadfastly held it to the present hour. 

The lower conception is easier to grasp than the 
higher. It requires less thought ; it lays a tax less 
severe upon the intellect. If Jesus of Nazareth is 
only a man, we can master him ; if he is only a man 
of genius, we can understand him. We are familiar 
with men, and even a great man does not seriously 
perplex us. But if Jesus stands in a class by him- 
self, if he combines in his nature the attributes 
both of God and of man, then we have upon our 
hands a problem. There are elements in his per- 
son apparently contradictory, opposing traits unite 
in him, and it becomes necessary for us to do a deal 
of thinking in order that we may reconcile these 
apparent contradictions and make clear the rela- 
tions in which he stands to God and man. But a 
conception is not to be rejected simply because it 
is difficult to take it in. There is no conception of 
inspiration so simple and so easily grasped as the 
conception of verbal inspiration. If God dictated 
the Bible from first word to last, that is a concep- 



146 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

tion so simple that a child can grasp it, and so long 
as a man can believe it, he will have no trouble with 
the Bible. He settles at a stroke all sorts of prob- 
lems, and henceforth has nothing to do but to take 
implicitly just what is written. But if we cannot 
believe that the Bible is dictated, and are driven to 
believe that every man who wrote a part of it 
allowed his own personality to enter to a greater 
or less extent into everything he wrote, then we 
have a conception which is far more difficult to 
manage, and one which can be held only by the 
constant exercise of the discriminating intellect. 
The lower conception is easier ; but in this world 
we are not after easy conceptions, we are after the 
truth. In astronomy we never dream of taking the 
easier conception. The Ptolemaic theory is far 
simpler than the Copernican. If we start with the 
earth as the centre, and make the sun and the moon 
and the stars revolve around it, we have a concep- 
tion which is so simple that nobody can misunder- 
stand it, and moreover it is one which the senses 
seem to support. But if you say that the sun is 
the centre of the solar system, and that he himself 
is never still but is revolving round some other sun, 
which sun is revolving round still another, then you 
get the universe into a tangle, and who can tell how 
you are coming out ! The Ptolemaic conception is 
simple. The only trouble with it is that it is not 
true. The astronomer never accepts anything be- 
cause it is simple. He tells me that the sun is 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 147 

ninety-three millions of miles away, and that the 
nearest sun to our sun is twenty-five billions of 
miles off, so that an express train starting from the 
earth, and travelling every day of every week of 
every year, would run seventy-five millions of years 
before it reached that distant sun. Such figures 
seem incredible and absurd, but the astronomer 
assures me that they are correct. Nor does he 
stop here. He tells me that he has been able to 
measure the distance of only about twenty-five 
stars, and that most of the stars which are seen in 
the sky are hundreds of thousands of quadrillions 
and quintillions of miles away. 

My mind cannot comprehend such figures ; but 
the astronomer says I must take them. If I tell him 
that I find the old Greek conception easier to appre- 
hend, which supposed the sun to be only seventy-five 
miles away, and that the stars are brilliants tacked 
on the inside of a hollow sphere, he simply pushes 
aside those ideas saying, that if I will allow him to 
use his larger figures, he will explain the seasons on 
the earth, and the eclipses of the sun and moon and 
planets, and the swing of the constellations, and the 
brightening and the fading of the nebulae, and will 
interpret almost every line of light written on the 
wide page of the blue night. An astronomer is 
never appalled by large conceptions because he 
knows that he is dealing with the universe of God. 

It may be necessary, therefore, for us to assume 
the higher conception of Jesus of Nazareth in order 



148 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

to explain the phenomena which must be accounted 
for. It may be that we must acknowledge him to 
be more than man in order to account for the 
change of climate in all the lands across which his 
name has been carried, and to explain the tidal 
movement of thought and feeling in the centuries 
that lie between us and his cross, and to give a 
reason for the fountains which have been opened 
in the human heart since he ascended from Olivet. 
Without controversy, as St. Paul said long ago, 
great is the mystery of godliness. And if large 
conceptions do not daunt an astronomer, they 
ought not to frighten a Christian. 

The lower conception requires less time for its 
mastery than does the higher. If Jesus is only a 
man, then I can apprehend him in as short a time 
as would be necessary for the apprehension of any 
other man of similar magnitude. It does not take 
one long to master the biography of even the 
greatest man. A few years of study will acquaint 
us sufficiently with the track of his orbit, and we 
shall come to know quite thoroughly the trend of 
his thought and the temper of his heart. But if 
Jesus is unique, the only Son of the living God, 
then I need not expect to apprehend him either 
to-day or to-morrow or the day after. This need 
not appall me, for suppose that the supreme object 
of human life is the apprehension of the person of 
Jesus, and suppose that the glory of eternity is the 
growing into his likeness and the appreciation of 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 149 

his nature. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, 
says that he has but one ambition, and that he 
counts all things loss in order that he may know 
Jesus and the power of his resurrection. And in 
his letter to the Ephesians he says that he has but 
one prayer for his converts, and that is that they 
may know the love of Christ which passeth knowl- 
edge. Any one, therefore, who wishes to hold the 
higher conception of Jesus, should be willing to 
give time. Patience is indispensable. Many men 
have thrown away the higher conception and taken 
the lower for no other reason than that they were 
unwilling to wait until they grew into the concep- 
tion which Peter held at Caesarea Philippi. Men 
sometimes say, "I believe in the humanity of Jesus," 
and they say it in a tone which means, " I do not 
propose to go any farther, I have settled the whole 
problem — Jesus was nothing but a man ! " When 
we hear a man say, " I believe in the humanity of 
Jesus," our reply should be, "I am glad you do. 
You ought to believe in it. That is the place to 

start. 

" t If Christ is a man, 

And only a man, I say, 
That of all mankind I will cleave to him, 
And to him will I cleave alway.' " 

That is where the apostles started. They did not 
believe in the deity of Jesus at first. It was only 
by the growth of years that they came at last to 
see that he transcended the limits of humanity. 



150 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

And the gospels steadfastly hold the humanity of 
Jesus in the foreground. His divinity is always in 
the background. They present him to us as a man 
who was born and grew, and was hungry, weak, 
tempted, surprised, indignant, hurt, wounded, killed, 
and buried. It is through his humanity we must 
make our way to his deity. If there is a young 
man here this morning who is not yet able to see 
the reasonableness of the church's teaching con- 
cerning the person of Jesus, let me say to him : Be 
patient. Do not throw away the higher conception 
as absurd. Take the lower conception, and go on. 
Learn more and more of this person who you 
say is a man. Give yourself more and more un- 
reservedly to his teachings. Obey more and more 
completely his commandments — and who knows 
but that you will some day say with Peter, " Thou 
art the Messiah," and exclaim with Thomas, " My 
Lord, and my God." 

The lower conception requires less spiritual pre- 
paredness than does the higher. There are many 
things which can be seen without any spiritual 
preparation whatsoever. Some things can be told 
and told easily. I can tell a man how to go to 
the Battery from Bryant Park ; I can tell a man 
how to make sulphuric acid ; I can tell a man 
when Shakespeare was born, and when Luther 
died, and when Lincoln freed the slaves ; but 
there are some things that cannot be told. I can- 
not tell a man beauty ; a man must see beauty for 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 151 

himself. I cannot tell a man music ; he must hear 
it for himself. I cannot tell a man love ; he must 
love before he knows what love is. Neither can I 
tell any man the deity of Jesus. Every man must 
find that out for himself. Jesus never told his 
disciples he was divine. He said, " Come to me. 
Follow me. Watch me. Do the things I tell you 
to do." And after they had been with him many 
months he said, "Who do you say I am?" And 
when Peter told him he was sure he was the Son 
of God, Jesus replied, saying, "Flesh and blood 
hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father 
who is in heaven," which means, " No man has 
told you this ; it has been revealed to you from 
within." 

Paul is also equally emphatic in asserting his con- 
viction that the deity of Jesus can be discerned only 
by the spiritual heart. No man, he says, can call 
Jesus Lord, except in the Holy Ghost. In his letter 
to the Corinthians he writes, " The natural man 
receiveth not the things of God, neither can he 
know them, because they are spiritually discerned." 
And again and again we find Paul asserting that 
the gospel which he preached had not been told him 
by anybody ; it all came as a revelation made to him 
in his own heart. As he himself expresses it, it 
pleased God to reveal his Son in him. Therefore 
the deity of Jesus is a truth which cannot be demon- 
strated to a man whose heart is not right toward 
God. If a man is wilful or vain or insincere or 



152 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

immoral, — if he is habitually breaking the law of 
God at any point, — he cannot see the deity of Jesus, 
nor will he be able to believe with his heart that 
the Son of God has really come. The first thing for 
that man to do is to repent. The New Testament 
informs us that Jesus began his ministry just as 
John the Baptist began his, by preaching the duty of 
repentance. And the beloved disciple says that this 
is the condemnation, that light has come into the 
world, and that men love darkness rather than 
light, because their deeds are evil. If, therefore, 
men settle back and say, " Prove to me that Jesus 
is divine," — supposing that it can be proved like a 
proposition in Euclid or an experiment in chem- 
istry or a case in law, — they must be told that 
spiritual demonstrations are impossible save to 
the humble and the contrite heart. 

Not only is the lower conception of Jesus more 
easily grasped by the intellect and more congenial 
to the unspiritual heart, but there are many plau- 
sible arguments which may be brought forward in 
its support. There is much in the spirit of the 
present age which makes it a satisfactory and even 
fascinating conception to large numbers of men. 
Ever since the publication of Strauss's "Life of 
Jesus," nearly seventy years ago, there has been 
an incessant battle raging round the person of 
Jesus. Scholars on both sides the sea in large 
numbers have endeavored to make it clear that 
Jesus of Nazareth was nothing but a man, and that 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 153 

all the New Testament stories which make him 
out more than a man are nothing but the poetry 
which has gathered round a simple and beautiful 
peasant life. These men have brought to their 
work great mental acumen, all the resources of 
scholarship, and all the graces of literary style. 
Their arguments are so plausible it is not surpris- 
ing that thousands should have been captured by 
them. The rising generation cannot fail to be 
influenced by the teaching of this school of 
thought. Nor can the Christian church entirely 
escape the demoralizing influences which proceed 
from men who persist in classing Jesus among the 
prophets. There are many members of the Chris- 
tian church who are all at sea in regard to the one 
doctrine of our faith which is cardinal and which 
includes all others. 

There is need, therefore, that we should ask our- 
selves why it is that the Christian church holds 
the higher conception ? The world is ready with 
its answer. When Jesus asks it, "Who do you 
say I am ? " it promptly replies, " A man." When 
he says to us, " Who do ye say that I am ? " we 
ought to be able to say with the promptness and 
assurance of Simon Peter, " Thou art the Messiah, 
the Son of the living God." And we ought to be 
able to give an answer to every one who asks for a 
reason for the hope that is within us. Let us then 
sit down in the presence of three facts. I do not 
ask you to speculate or to dream, but simply to 



V 



154 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

face facts. Those who imagine that the deity of 
Jesus is a matter of philosophy or metaphysics 
do greatly err. The reasons for thinking him 
divine are not the product of philosophic thought, 
but are solid and colossal facts which even a way- 
faring man can see. 

Let me ask you, then, to free your mind from 
presuppositions and prejudices and biases and 
fancies, and become clear-eyed observers. Dr. 
Johnson used to say to Boswell, " Clear your mind 
of cant." Let me address to you the same exhor- 
tation, Clear your mind of cant. There are many 
varieties of it, all of them mischievous and hateful. 
There is religious cant, society cant, literary cant, 
philosophical cant, professional cant — clear your 
mind of cant and become an honest observer. It 
is not so easy as you think. We are ruled largely 
by our imaginations and our speculations. If you 
would believe in the deity of Jesus, lay aside your 
presuppositions and simply look. 

The first fact to which I invite your attention is 
the New Testament. There is no doubt it exists, 
nor is there any doubt that it has existed for nearly 
two thousand years. It does not matter to us this 
morning who wrote it or why it was written. We 
shall take it simply as a fact. On glancing through 
it we see that it contains twenty-seven pieces of 
writing, four of them biographies, twenty-one of 
them letters, one a piece of history, and the other 
a piece of prophecy. These twenty-seven pieces 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 155 

of writing were written by nine men, and all the 
nine men are writing about one person. They unite 
in painting a portrait — the most wonderful portrait 
ever painted. This book tells us about a life which 
began with one miracle and ended with another. 
It says that between the beginning miracle and the 
ending miracle there was a series of miracles. It 
reports many words which this man said. The 
words are even more wonderful than his deeds. 
They sound wonderful to us, they sounded just as 
wonderful to the men who heard them first. The 
men of the first century were astounded at his 
teaching. Sometimes they marvelled, and some- 
times they gnashed their teeth in rage. Even 
those who disliked the speaker most, were obliged 
to confess that never man so spake. When we 
take his words and study them, two things become 
at once quite clear. This person makes tremen- 
dous claims upon the minds and hearts of men. 
He says, "Come to me! Follow me! Abide in 
me ! " In the presence of death he gave his disciples 
a ceremony, saying, " Do this in remembrance of 
me." Wherever he went he was in search of dis- 
ciples. When he found men willing to become his 
disciples, he insisted that they should place him 
first in their affections. " If you love father or 
mother or wife or child more than me, you are not 
worthy of me." He sent his disciples out to face 
danger and possible death ; but he said that death 
incurred for his sake was not terrible, but glorious. 



1 56 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

Among the men who were his dearest friends he 
always acted as a king. Nothing short of absolute 
obedience was satisfying to him. "You are my 
friends if you do whatsoever I command you." 
"Why do you call me Lord, if you do not the 
things that I say?" "If you know these things, 
happy are you if you do them." The only reason 
he was able to lay such imperial claims upon the 
consciences and lives of others was because of the 
conception which he entertained of himself. He 
lifted himself above everybody and everything, and 
yet he said that he was meek and lowly of heart. 

He lifted himself above the Scriptures. The 
Scriptures in Jesus' day were idolized by the relig- 
ious leaders of the people. Jesus said, " It is writ- 
ten, but I say ... It is written, but I say . . . 
It is written, but I say ..." No wonder people 
were astonished at his doctrine, and said he taught 
as one having authority. He lifted himself above 
the most sacred institutions of his nation. He 
placed himself above the Sabbath — "the Son of 
man is Lord of the Sabbath." He exalted himself 
above the temple — "A greater than the temple 
is here." " No two stones of this temple will be 
left standing one upon the other, but destroy this 
temple of my body and I will raise it in three days." 
He set himself above all men that were living then 
or that had ever lived, or that ever would live. He 
placed himself above Abraham, the father of the 
Hebrew people. "Before Abraham was, I am." 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 157 

He lifted himself above Solomon, the wisest 
Hebrew that had ever lived. "A greater than 
Solomon is here." He claimed to be preexistent. 
" I came down from heaven." " What if you see 
the Son of man ascending to where he was before." 
To Nicodemus, at night, he said, " I have descended 
out of heaven." And in his last prayer for his dis- 
ciples, in the upper room, he said, " Glorify thou 
me with thine own self with the glory which I had 
with thee before the world was." He claimed to 
be sinless. " Which one of you " he said to the 
religious leaders of his day, " convicteth me of sin ?" 

He never betrayed the slightest consciousness 
of wrong-doing. All the other characters in the 
Bible confess themselves sinners. From Moses 
down to Paul they all use the same language. 
"Who am I?" "Woe is me." "I abhor my- 
self." " O wretched man that I am ! " " If we 
say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." He 
told his disciples that when they prayed they 
should say, " Father, forgive us our debts, as we 
forgive our debtors." But he never offered that 
prayer himself. Not only did he claim to be sin- 
less, but other men felt his sinlessness and acknowl- 
edged it. " Depart from me," cried Peter, " for I 
am a sinful man, O Lord." Even Judas in the 
torments of remorse cried out, " I have betrayed 
innocent blood." Jesus is the only person in his- 
tory who is able to stand up and say, " I do always 
those things which are pleasing unto him." 



158 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

And so Jesus placed himself in a class by him- 
self. He would not admit that he and his country- 
men belonged to the same class of beings. " I am 
from above," he said ; "you are from below. You 
are of this world ; I am not of this world. No man 
knows the Father but the Son and he to whomso- 
ever the Son is willing to reveal him." He told his 
disciples that when they prayed they should say, 
" Our Father," but he never used the pronoun 
" our " in addressing God. He never prayed with 
his disciples, he prayed apart. After his resur- 
rection he said to Mary, " Go, tell my brethren 
that I ascend to my Father and your Father and 
to my God and your God." Why did he not say, 
" I ascend to our Father ? " Because he is in a 
class apart. His relation to God is different 
from that sustained by any other character in 
history. 

And if he is unique in the days of his incarnation, 
he is to be unique forever. After the days of his 
flesh are over, he is to be all-powerful. All au- 
thority is given unto him, in heaven and on earth. 
He is to be omnipresent. " Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world." He is to 
be Judge. " Many will say to me in that day, 
Lord, Lord, and then will I say, I never knew you. 
Depart." "The Son of man shall sit upon the 
throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered 
all nations, and he shall separate the one from the 
other as the shepherd divideth the sheep from the 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 159 

goats." And since all this is true he does not 
hesitate to say that he is to be an object of wor- 
ship. "The Father hath committed all judgment 
unto the Son, that all men should honor the Son 
even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth 
not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath 
sent him." That is the gist of the New Testament. 
The man who laid the foundations of the 
Christian church in Asia Minor and in Europe 
took Jesus Christ at his word, and believed that he 
was all that he said he was. Paul in his letter to 
the Colossians says that Jesus is the image of the 
invisible God, the first born of the whole creation, 
and that by him were all things created that are 
in heaven and are in earth, visible and invisible, 
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or prin- 
cipalities, or powers : all things were created by 
him and for him ; and he is above all things, and 
by him all things consist, that he is the head of 
the body, the church. And in his letter to the 
Ephesians he says that " God has placed Christ far 
above all rule and authority and power and do- 
minion, and every name that is named, not only in 
this world, but also in that which is to come ; and 
he put all things in subjection under his feet, and 
gave him to be head over all things to the church." 
And in his letter to the Philippians he says that 
Christ Jesus was in the form of God, but thought 
it not robbery to be equal with God, and that at 
the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every 



160 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to 
the glory of God the Father. 

Now what will you do with this fact ? You may 
do any one of three different things. You may 
say that the portrait is a correct likeness of a per- 
son who lived and worked upon this earth. This 
is what the Christian church has always said. Or 
you may say that the portrait is a cheat, that Jesus 
of Nazareth was either a rogue, or that the dis- 
ciples were tricksters, and that the religion which 
they foisted upon the world is a sham. That is 
what many sceptics of the eighteenth century said. 
But to say that now is considered very coarse and 
very vulgar. The third thing to do is to cut out of 
the portrait those features which do not appeal to 
you, and take only that part of it which lies within 
the range of ordinary human experience. A man is 
of course at liberty to do either one or the other 
of these three things ; but if he does the third thing, 
he ought to understand at the beginning that if one 
begins to cut the New Testament portrait of Christ, 
it is exceedingly difficult to know where to stop, 
because the miraculous element is so interwoven 
with every part of his life that to cut out this 
miraculous element is to leave the gospels a mass 
of shreds. The supernatural runs in the blood of 
the New Testament, and to get rid of it the blood of 
the New Testament must be drawn out. It is an 
aroma which enfolds it like an enveloping atmos- 
phere. 



.THE DEITY OF JESUS 161 

" You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, 
But the scent of the roses will cling round it still." 

In the second place, one should bear in mind that 
if he cuts the portrait of Christ, his action is not 
warranted by any external evidence whatsoever, 
but is prompted by certain presuppositions exist- 
ing in his own mind. These presuppositions may 
be whims, or they may be prejudices, or they may 
be hypotheses, or they may be the product of his 
own mental constitution wrought upon by the 
spirit of the age. A man who cuts out of the New 
Testament the miraculous element has no justifica- 
tion for so doing outside of himself. Not one 
scrap of evidence has been brought to light within 
the last hundred years, either out of the earth, or 
from the monuments, or from the shelves of old 
libraries ; not one single fact has been discovered 
by the telescope, or by the microscope, or by the 
spectroscope, or any other instrument of science ; 
not one scintilla of evidence has been found either 
in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in 
the waters under the earth, to invalidate the his- 
toric integrity of a single paragraph of the gospels 
as they appear in our Revised Version of the New 
Testament. 

It should be further borne in mind that the man 
who cuts the New Testament according to his own 
liking, has no right to put on airs and assume that 
he is thoughtful above all others, or that he has a 
more disinterested love of truth. Men who cut the 

M 



1 62 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

New Testament sometimes are labelled " advanced 
thinkers." A more humble epithet would seem to 
be appropriate, for your child can cut out of the 
best book in your house all the pictures in it, and 
it can do this without mental exertion, and in an 
incredibly short space of time. A man can cut out 
of the New Testament all of its most beautiful 
passages, and still be a dull-witted man and a mere 
tyro in scholarship. A man has no right to give 
himself a title, the plain implication of which is, 
that the man who does not follow him is a belated 
numskull. To cut out of the New Testament those 
elements which have made the book a power in the 
history of the world, is by no means, then, con- 
clusive proof of extraordinary intellectual acumen, 
nor an indisputable indication that the man is 
possessed of a rare and vigorous scientific habit of 
mind. Least of all does it prove that he is an 
" advanced thinker." Why should a man be called 
"advanced" who has not advanced an inch beyond 
the position held by the Palestinian crowd nearly 
nineteen centuries ago ? 



VII 
THE DEITY OF JESUS. — Part II 



VII 
THE DEITY OF JESUS. — Part II 

u Who do men say that the Son of man is ? Who say ye 
that I am ?" — Matthew 16 : 13, 15. 

We are now ready for our second fact. The 
New Testament portrait is not sufficient. If the 
New Testament were the only fact which Chris- 
tians have in their possession, it would be impos- 
sible for us to maintain our belief in the deity of 
Jesus Christ. The New Testament taken by itself 
is an incredible book. I could not accept the gos- 
pel story as genuine history if that history were 
not supplemented by something which has taken 
place since Jesus died on the cross. No book of 
any sort, even though it be the New Testament 
itself, is substantial enough to hold up such an 
imposing edifice as belief in the deity of Christ. 
There are many minds in our day to whom the 
New Testament is no proof whatsoever. Such 
minds would not be affected in the least by any- 
thing which I said a week ago. That sermon did 
not reach the root of the trouble. There is no 
doubt the portrait exists ; but the fact to be proved 

i6 S 



1 66 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

is whether or not the portrait is an accurate like- 
ness of any person that ever lived on this planet. 

Men are increasingly suspicious of all beautiful 
stories of every sort in the history and literature 
of nations, and especially is the modern mind dis- 
trustful of documents which contain a miraculous 
element. The speculations of Strauss and Renan 
have passed into the air like fine dust, and all of 
us take more or less of that dust into our mental 
lungs. Men tell us it is not surprising that we 
should find miracles in the New Testament, for we 
find them everywhere else. There is scarcely a 
great name in history around which miraculous 
stories have not been woven, and in every case such 
stories are to be accounted for in the same manner. 
They are nothing but embellishments created by 
the imagination. The miraculous stories in the 
gospels are only the ivy which has grown up around 
a few simple facts in a beautiful Galilean life, The 
ivy in Palestine is precisely like the ivy in other 
fields. And as for the exalted language which the 
apostles are represented as having used concerning 
Jesus, that, too, is only like the language which is 
found elsewhere. Palestine is not the only country 
which has indulged in the luxury of apotheosis. 

The deification of man has been common in 
human history. Three thousand years before Jesus 
came, an Egyptian Pharaoh claimed to be the in- 
carnation of the Eternal God, and his subjects took 
him at his word. The same idea sprang up among 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 167 

the Babylonians, and among the Persians, and 
among the Indians, and later on among the 
Greeks. Was not Alexander the Great after his 
death worshipped as a god ? and did not the Romans, 
following the example of the Greeks, deify more 
than one of their heroes ? Did not the Senate pro- 
claim that Julius Caesar was a god, and for that 
reason no image should be made of him ? And did 
not the Roman populace believe that the comet 
which flashed out in the sky soon after Caesar's 
death, was evidence of the fact that he had been 
admitted into the council of the gods ? 

Apotheosis, then, men say, in the New Testa- 
ment, is only what it is outside of the New Testa- 
ment, and in every case it is a delusion. And so 
our belief in the deity of Jesus would be untenable 
if we did not have in our possession something 
more than the New Testament. The portrait of 
Jesus is one fact, we must have another. The 
second fact at which I now ask you to look is 
the Christian church, a living, growing church 
with a history. This is our second proof of the 
deity of Jesus. It is doubtful if God ever intended 
that a book should be made the primary proof 
of the deity of the founder of the Christian religion. 

The New Testament is indeed an invaluable 
book. It has its place, and when it is properly 
used it is of enormous value ; but when we put it 
into the wrong place, it causes immeasurable mis- 
chief. It was never intended to be the sole 



1 68 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

defence of our faith, nor is it the deepest rock on 
which we are to build the greatest of our doc- 
trines. The printed page is not sufficiently strong 
to hold up the immense weight of a world-conquer- 
ing religion. That God never intended a book to 
be the chief and the sole defence of our faith is 
evidenced by the following facts: Jesus never 
wrote a line himself, and so far as we know he 
never told his disciples to write down upon paper a 
single sentence which he ever spoke. Not one of 
the disciples, so far as we know, wrote down during 
the Master's lifetime one of his discourses, or an 
account of one of his miracles or deeds. There 
were shorthand reporters in Palestine in Jesus' day, 
for they existed wherever the Roman Empire un- 
furled her standards. But so far as history tells us, 
no Roman shorthand writer ever took down a single 
sentence which fell from Jesus' lips. 

Jesus left eleven apostles to continue his work 
in the world, but only two of these, so far as we 
know, ever thought it worth their while to put 
down on paper even a brief account of their Master's 
life. A man in the fourth century says that a man 
in the second century says that Matthew wrote 
down in Hebrew some of the things which Jesus 
said. That Hebrew gospel vanished early, and how 
much of our first gospel can be attributed to 
Matthew, no scholar is able to declare. The only 
other of the apostles who is said to have written a 
life of Jesus is John. But according to tradition he 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 169 

did not write his gospel until fifty or sixty years 
after Jesus' death, so that his gospel is unlike the 
other three. The peculiar atmosphere which hangs 
about it is due to the fact that we see Jesus through 
the mind of John. 

It does not look as though the apostles felt that 
the sole defence of the Christian religion must be a 
book. Saul of Tarsus was a scholar and a master 
of language, but so far as we know he did not write 
a line for a dozen years after his conversion, and 
even then he would not have written anything if he 
had not been compelled to do so. He was an itin- 
erant preacher passing from city to city, and after 
his departure his converts sometimes got into 
trouble. They were harassed by enemies without, 
and tormented by fears within, and in order to 
comfort and direct them, the apostle sent back, 
from time to time, a brief epistle. Some of his 
letters have been lost, only thirteen of them have 
been saved. Paul did not imagine that any of 
them would be preserved nineteen hundred years. 
He never dreamed that anything he wrote would 
be bound up some day in a book along with the 
Psalms, nor did he once imagine that men on the 
Lord's day in Christian churches throughout 
the world would refer to his letters as freely as 
they refer to Moses and Isaiah. 

In short, there is no reason for thinking that any 
one of the men who wrote the writings which have 
been gathered into our New Testament had the 



170 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

faintest conception that he was making a contribu- 
tion to a book which would become the defence 
of the Christian faith. These writings existed 
separately for a long time. Little by little they 
came together in apparently the most haphazard 
and accidental manner. Indeed, the gradual growth 
of the canon of the New Testament is one of the 
most fascinating as well as one of the most surpris- 
ing pages of Christian history. 

Why did not these men see the importance of 
creating and preserving a book? Why did they 
not write the New Testament at once, and write it 
in such a manner that all the world might be abso- 
lutely certain of the authorship of each book ? The 
answer is that the apostles had no time to write the 
New Testament, they were too busy in building a 
church. They were like the Master himself, he 
never wrote a book. He gave his time and strength 
to the building of a church. The church is to be 
the pillar and the ground of the truth. A book 
cannot hold up anything. Only a living institution 
is sufficient for great things. The Christian church 
is the argument which the Christian man must 
present to unbelievers, and the defenders of our 
faith who have best known how to present their 
cause have, from the first century downward, dwelt 
not upon isolated texts written down in a book, but 
have pointed with confidence to a mighty institu- 
tion, an indubitable monument to the greatness of 
our Lord. 



THE DEITY OF JESUS ifl 

Listen to one of the great preachers of the 
early church, Justin, saying, about the year 150, 
"There is not one single race of men, whether 
barbarians or Greeks, or whatever they may be 
called, nomads or vagrants, or herdsmen dwelling 
in tents among whom prayers and giving of thanks 
are not offered through the, name of the crucified 
Jesus." What unceasing, enthusiastic, mighty work 
must have been done to make such a declaration as 
that possible one hundred and twenty years after 
Jesus' death ! Or listen to Tertullian a few years 
later. He is addressing a Roman official. "We are 
but of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place 
belonging to you, cities, islands, castles, towns, as- 
semblies, your very camps, your tribes, companies, 
palace, senate, forum ; we leave you your temples 
only." 

The early Christian preachers did not travel 
from land to land holding their finger nervously 
on a text, saying, " Christ is the Son of God 
because it is written so in this holy book." They 
pointed to an institution which had been created 
by allegiance to his name. The growth of the 
early church is one of the most wonderful phe- 
nomena in history. It grew more rapidly than the 
historians of an earlier day imagined. The figures 
of Gibbon have been pulverized and blown to the 
winds by the researches of recent scholarship. 

We make a mistake, then, whenever we create 
the impression that belief in the deity of Jesus is 



1/2 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

a matter of proof texts. By creating such an im- 
pression we make Christianity seem technical and 
petty. Conscientious people become bewildered. 
They go to hear preachers preach, and one man 
says one thing and the second man says the oppo- 
site; they do not know which one of the two is 
right. They then go into a library and begin to 
read ; but what is a library but a Tower of Babel, 
a great hubbub of conflicting voices ? The first 
book they read says one thing, the second book 
says something else, the third book contradicts 
both the others. The ordinary man turned loose 
in a great library of several hundred thousand vol- 
umes is simply swamped. In order to use books 
aright a man must grow up with them from his 
cradle. 

But certainly Christianity is not a thing in- 
tended primarily and chiefly for scholars ; it is 
for the plain man who has had no opportunity to 
go to school and has little time for reading. If 
Christianity is to be proved from a book, then one 
can become confused by the variations and the 
discrepancies and the redactions and the interpola- 
tions : these are the things which make the mind 
sick. If a man is conscientious, he becomes hope- 
lessly bewildered. If you make Christianity a 
thing that can be proved by a certain manipula- 
tion of a few sentences taken from a book, the 
men who are not so conscientious will simply pass 
by on the other side ; they will say, " The whole 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 173 

subject is too deep for me; let people investigate 
it who like that sort of thing ; as for me, I will do 
the best I can and take the consequences ! " 

Christianity is not altogether dependent on a 
book. The religion of Christ is not to be proved 
by the dexterous manipulation of scattered sen- 
tences. Whenever you become bewildered by the 
conflicting voices of printed books, throw the books 
away, and get out under God's great broad sky, and 
let your eyes sweep across the centuries. It is true 
that Jesus cuts a large figure in the New Testa- 
ment ; but if that were the only place on earth 
where his figure was colossal, we should make short 
work of him — we should relegate him to a place 
among the heroes of fiction. But he cuts a still 
larger figure in human history. He walks down the 
centuries with the tread of a conqueror. Nearly 
nineteen hundred years have passed since he died 
upon the cross, and in all these centuries he has 
been lifting empires off their hinges, and turning 
the stream of history into new channels. Emerson 
is right when he says that his name is ploughed 
into the world. Renan is right when he says that 
his life has been made a corner-stone in the build- 
ing of our race. Lecky is right when he says the 
simple record of three short years of active life has 
done more to regenerate and to soften mankind 
than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all 
the exhortations of moralists. 

Christ in history! There is a fact — face it. 



1^4 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

This thing is not done in a corner. It is done 
openly in the eyes of the world. We will not be 
bothered now by interpolations and redactions. We 
are out in God's open air, where we can see clearly 
for ourselves. According to the New Testament, 
Jesus walked along the shores of a little sea known 
as the Sea of Galilee. And there he called Peter 
and Andrew and James and John and several others 
to be his followers, and they left all and followed 
him. After they had followed him they revered 
him, and later on adored and worshipped him. He 
left them on their faces, each man saying, "My 
Lord and my God ! " All that is in the New Testa- 
ment. 

But put the New Testament away. Time passes ; 
history widens ; an unseen Presence walks up and 
down the shores of a larger sea, — the sea called 
the Mediterranean, — and this unseen Presence 
calls men to follow him. Tertullian, Augustine, 
Anselm, Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Thomas a 
Kempis, Savonarola, John Huss, Martin Luther, 
Philip Melanchthon, Uhlric Zwingli, John Calvin 
— another twelve — and these all followed him and 
cast themselves at his feet, saying, in the words 
of the earlier twelve, " My Lord and my God ! " 

Time passes ; history advances ; humanity lives 
its life around the circle of a larger sea — the 
Atlantic Ocean. An unseen Presence walks up 
and down the shores calling men to follow him. 
He calls John Knox, John Wesley, George White- 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 175 

field, Charles Spurgeon, Henry Parry Liddon, 
Joseph Parker, Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bush- 
nell, Henry Ward Beecher, Richard Salter Storrs, 
Phillips Brooks, Dwight L. Moody — another 
twelve — and these leave all and follow him. We 
find them on their faces, each one saying, " My Lord 
and my God ! " 

Time passes; history is widening; humanity is 
building its civilization round a still wider sea — 
we call it the Pacific Ocean. An unknown Presence 
moves up and down the shores calling men to follow 
him, and they are doing it. Another company of 
twelve is forming. And what took place in Pales- 
tine nineteen centuries ago is taking place again in 
our own day and under our own eyes. Only the 
other day Herod stretched forth his hand and vexed 
certain of the church, and he killed James, the 
brother of John, with the sword. Did you not see 
it reported in all the papers ? Only a few weeks 
ago Stephen, a Christian preacher, was mobbed. 
Before his persecutors he fell down helpless, and in 
his dying moment he prayed, " Lord, lay not this sin 
to their charge." It was in all the papers ; did you 
not read it ? Not long ago Saul of Tarsus, having 
worked in Asia in the Chinese Empire, was shoved 
to the wall by brutal strength, and the last thing 
he said to us was : " I have fought a good fight. I 
have finished my course. I have kept the faith." 
Did you not hear it ? 

What are you going to do with Christian history ? 



176 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

How are you going to explain it ? How are you 
going to unlock its mystery ? I believe that the 
New Testament is the only key that will fit the 
lock. The New Testament gives us the clew to 
the interpretation of nineteen centuries. This is 
the value of the book. It is not the sole defence 
of Christianity, but it reveals to us the meaning 
of the church and explains her conquests. 

What, then, are you going to do with this second 
fact, a living, growing church with a history ? 
There are only three things which can be done 
with it. You may say that the church lives and 
grows because Christ, God's only Son, is indeed 
with her, even as he promised ; or you may say 
that the Christian church is the creation of a hor- 
rible delusion, a monument which bears awful wit- 
ness to the infinite capacity of the human mind for 
error ; or you may say that the life and power of 
the church are due not to a miraculous element in 
the New Testament, but to its ethical teaching. 
You may say it is not the story of the miraculous 
birth, or the story of the miraculous resurrection, 
or the account of the unparalleled things supposed 
to have come from Jesus' lips, which have created 
the church and made it strong, but that all its 
strength has come from the sweet and simple life 
of a noble-hearted peasant who announced the 
Golden Rule and urged men to love one another. 

But if a man asserts that the strength of the 
Christian church is not due to the higher conception 



THE DEITY OF JESUS iyy 

of Jesus, which the church has entertained from the 
beginning, he ought to bear in mind that the lower 
conception of Jesus has been in the world from the 
first century until ours, and that the two concep- 
tions have been in unending conflict. The lower 
conception of Jesus is no modern thing in the realm 
of human thought, nor is it the product of our 
scientific habit of mind. The lower conception 
was held tenaciously by the men in the streets of 
Jerusalem. "You being a man are making your- 
self God." They held the lower conception of him, 
he held the higher ; and because he did hold the 
higher they filled the air with curses and reached 
about for stones with which to crush him to the 
earth. After his death many members of the 
Jewish church, attracted by the beauty of his teach- 
ings, were willing to accept him as a leader. They 
discarded the miraculous stories which were told 
by those who had known him best, and chose rather 
to revere him as an illustrious prophet, superior in 
wisdom to all who had gone before him. These 
Jewish Christians were known as Ebionites. They 
had among their number many honest and earnest 
and learned men ; but their influence was a waning 
one, and at last in the fifth century they vanished 
from the earth. 

In the second century another conception of 
Jesus came into vogue. There were men who 
were unsatisfied by the conception advocated by 
the Ebionites. The Ebionites did not do Jesus 

N 



178 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

justice, and so these second-century thinkers, who 
are known in history as Gnostics, gave him an 
exalted place, acknowledged his preexistence, and 
claimed that he was an intermediary being, holding 
the chief place in the long line of angels by which 
the chasm between heaven and earth is spanned. 
Gnosticism had many learned and mighty defend- 
ers, but Gnosticism grew weak and vanished. 

In the third century the Neoplatonists appeared. 
Ammonius Saccas was their founder. They were 
men who combined the New Testament with phi- 
losophy in a most attractive fashion. They saw the 
beauty of Jesus' character, and were glad to ac- 
knowledge it. But to the Neoplatonists, Jesus 
was nothing but a lovely man. They were willing 
that his statue should stand along with the statues 
of Abraham, and Pythagoras, and others. They 
liked to inscribe the Golden Rule on the walls and 
monuments of cities. As one of their greatest 
teachers, Porphyry, says, " We must not calumniate 
Christ, but only those who worship him as God." 
Neoplatonism in its day was mighty; but the time 
came when it dwindled and died. 

In the fourth century a distinguished Christian 
preacher in Alexandria, by the name of Arius, dis- 
satisfied with the higher conception of Jesus as 
entertained by the church, brought forth a concep- 
tion which seemed to him to be truer to the Scrip- 
tures and more satisfying to the heart. According 
to Arius, Jesus Christ is indeed great, the very first 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 179 

of all created beings. He existed before the days 
of his incarnation, and has ascended to the heavens 
where he is to be the judge of the quick and the dead. 
His name is indeed above every name, says Arius, 
but he is notGod. Arianism had many enthusiastic 
and learned advocates, and as the belief of isolated 
Christians, it has maintained a foothold almost to 
the present hour. But as a church, Arianism 
never grew strong enough to conquer. 

It was in the sixteenth century that a man named 
Socinus brought forth another conception which in 
his judgment was far superior to the conception 
which the church had always held. According to 
Socinus, Jesus was born a man and by complete sub- 
mission to God he became at last a god himself, earn- 
ing for himself the right to be the master of the ages 
and the judge of our race. Socinianism was exceed- 
ingly plausible, making many converts on the con- 
tinent, passing into England, and thence to the 
United States. But Socinianism has vanished 
from the earth. In the eighteenth century, Socin- 
ianism struck its roots deep in the Presbyterian 
churches of England. A large proportion of all 
English Presbyterian churches came under the 
sway of the Socinian conception of Jesus — and 
with what result ? Did you ever ask yourself why 
English Presbyterianism is among the weakest 
of all Protestant communions in that country, lag- 
ging far behind the Baptists, the Congregationalists, 
and the Wesleyans ? Certainly here is a phe- 



180 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

nomenon which must be accounted for, and the 
explanation is written large in history. English 
Presbyterianism became blighted as by a deadening 
frost when it accepted the lower conception of the 
person of Jesus Christ. The Socinianism of Eng- 
land reached across the Atlantic, and like a subtle 
leaven entered into the religious life of Massachu- 
setts. The first church to become openly Unitarian 
was an Episcopal church, King's Chapel, in Boston. 
A few years later Congregational churches began to 
pass over, until about one-quarter of the entire 
number had openly confessed their adherence to 
this lower conception of the person of Christ. Har- 
vard College, with its president and its professors, 
went over, so did the Beacon Street aristocracy. 
The men of learning and of leading, the philoso- 
phers, the poets, the men of wealth in large num- 
bers, identified themselves with the Unitarian 
faith. It looked at one time as though the entire 
world would inevitably surrender the higher concep- 
tion of our Lord, and Dr. Ellis in his history of Uni- 
tarianism says that Unitarians were confident that 
before fifty years were passed orthodoxy would 
become a thing of the past, while Unitarianism 
would be the prevailing type of religion. 

All that happened in the first quarter of the nine- 
teenth century. We are now at the beginning of the 
twentieth century, and what is the situation ? The 
Congregationalists who remained true to the higher 
conception of Jesus have become an army of 650,000, 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 181 

those who accepted the lower conception of Jesus 
are to-day a small company of 70,000. The Con- 
gregational churches which remained true to the 
teaching of the church have in foreign lands to-day 
hundreds of men and women teaching the gospel 
of the blessed God, while the Unitarian churches 
of this country have not one single missionary in 
pagan lands. How are we to account for the dead- 
ening effect upon spiritual life of every conception 
of Jesus save the conception which was held by 
the apostles at the beginning? We cannot say 
that the lower conception has not had a fair trial. 
It has been in the world for almost nineteen hun- 
dred years, and every century has had its Marti- 
neaus, its Harnacks, and its Channings. It has been 
advocated and defended by men who have brought 
to its defence the resources of scholarship, and the 
eloquence of a passionate enthusiasm. It has been 
professed by kings and their courts, the learned, 
the high, and the great ; but for some reason or 
other, this lower conception of Jesus sooner or 
later goes down. 

I am bringing no arraignment against any body 
of Christians on the earth ; I am simply stating 
facts as I find them, and as an earnest student 
in search of truth I ask myself what is the in- 
terpretation of these facts ? Why is it that the 
lower conception of Jesus cannot conquer ? I 
can understand how a delusion might maintain 
its ground one generation or a half-dozen genera- 



1 82 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

tions ; but I cannot believe that a delusion would 
be mightier than the truth through sixty gen- 
erations. The two conceptions have met again and 
again and again, and every time they have met 
the lower conception has been routed and driven 
from the field. Nineteen of God's centuries have 
come out of eternity since Jesus died upon the cross, 
and all of them have put the crown on the head of 
the higher conception of Jesus, and broken the 
sceptre of the lower conception. 

The Christian church may be likened to a tree 
throwing out its branches in all directions. Every 
branch that has held up its leaves to Christ as the 
sun of righteousness has grown vigorous, and every 
branch whose leaves have been turned toward Jesus 
as a man has withered and shrivelled. How is this 
to be accounted for ? 

There is something pathetic in the disappoint- 
ment of the men who in spite of history keep 
on clinging to the lower conception. William 
Ellery Channing, after forty years of as earnest 
work as any Christian preacher ever did, said in 
his old age, " I would that I could look to Unita- 
rianism with more hope." Edward Everett Hale, 
a man who has seen more than eighty summers, is 
reported to have said recently, " I do not see why 
so simple and democratic a religion as Unitarianism 
has not swept the country long ago." The Boston 
saint is not so keen-eyed as an aged Jew whose 
words are recorded in the book of the Acts. When 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 183 

the apostles were brought before the Sanhedrin on 
the charge of stirring up people by preaching to 
them the religion of Jesus, some of the members 
of that distinguished body were in favor of squelch- 
ing them at once ; but Gamaliel arose and argued 
thus, " If this counsel or this work be of men, it 
will come to naught ; but if it be of God, ye can- 
not overthrow it, lest haply ye be found to fight 
against God." That is to say : if a thing is of God, 
it will succeed and grow ; but if a thing is not of 
God, it will come to naught. Through sixty gen- 
erations the lower conception of Jesus has been 
coming to naught. Through the same length of 
time the higher conception of Jesus has been grow- 
ing. If you tell me that God will allow a delusion 
to conquer the truth through sixty generations, and 
that he will permit a delusion to produce nobler 
men than the truth, and that he has so constructed 
the universe that a blasphemy and a lie will pro- 
duce a church richer in all the graces of the spirit 
than truth can produce, I should be tempted to say 
in Milton's words, "The pillared firmament is 
rottenness, and earth's base built on stubble." 
How can we believe that there is anything true in 
the universe if error succeeds continuously and 
gloriously, and brings forth finer fruit than the 
truth ? 

There is a vast difference between the lower 
conception and the higher. We are sometimes 
told that the conceptions are similar, and that there 



1 84 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

is no radical difference. All such assertions are 
false. The distinction is cardinal and reaches to 
the roots of life. The church which holds to the 
lower conception may seem similar in its worship 
and life to the church that holds the higher con- 
ception. Young people who have not yet learned 
to look below the surface are apt to be deceived by 
appearances. There are indeed many things in 
both churches alike. In both there is the water 
of life, in both there are many of the same virtues 
and graces, in both there are men and women who 
are earnest, sincere, and industrious in good works. 
But although so much alike, one church is a pool 
and the other church is a spring. The church 
which holds the higher conception of Jesus is a 
spring. It has in it a well of water springing up 
unto everlasting life. The other church is a pool. 
The difference between a pool and a spring is that 
a spring is fed from within, while a pool is fed from 
without. A church that holds the lower conception 
of JesUs is never more than a pool. It exists only in 
the neighborhood of other churches which can feed 
it. If you put it into a community by itself, it will 
in the course of time evaporate. Churches which 
hold to the lower conception of Jesus are always 
more abundant and enjoy greater prosperity the 
nearer they are located to churches which hold 
the higher conception and in which the water of 
life is abundant. In the ecclesiastical world, as in 
the natural world, around every spring there are 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 185 

pools. Pools have their uses on the earth, but let 
us never forget that they cannot exist without the 
springs. 

We are living in a scientific age when men are 
everywhere believing that there is such a thing as 
the survival of the fittest. If a form of life sur- 
vives in spite of opposition, and persists in growing 
through a long stretch of time, beating back its 
competitors and succeeding where they have failed, 
men are ready to say that this is the form of life 
which deserves to live. The others have fallen by 
the way because nature does not need them. Now 
here we have a conception of Jesus of Nazareth 
which has from the very start been obliged to make 
its way in the face of the most determined opposi- 
tion. It has been opposed and resisted with fierce 
determination and long-continued enthusiasm and 
vigor. It has been attacked by every weapon 
known to the ingenuity of the human mind. It 
has been subjected to the keenest analysis, burned 
in the hottest of critical fires. It has been ridi- 
culed and scorned and hated; but the ages have 
not been able to kill it. Now when we see an 
idea coming out of every battle more luminous 
and radiant and glorious ; when we see a concep- 
tion making its way through the storms and tem- 
pests of nineteen centuries, and coming out at last 
stronger than all its competitors, and triumphant 
over all of its foes, is it too much to say that this 
idea survives because it is fit to survive, that this 



k 



1 86 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

conception is indeed the conception which God 
intends humanity to hold ? 

Let us now look at the third fact. Our first fact 
was the portrait of Christ, our second fact was a 
growing church with a history, our third fact is 
a constant and persistent individual experience. 
Here we reach the foundation. Were it not for 
the Christian heart, belief in the deity of Jesus 
would have vanished from the earth long ago. 
Christianity — it is not built on a book, but on the 
heart. When Peter and John began to preach 
the gospel, they refused to be silenced by the Jeru- 
salem authorities, saying, " We cannot but speak 
the things which we have seen and heard." Paul 
always stood upon his own personal experience. 
When he talks to the mob in Jerusalem, he tells 
them about the wonderful light that fell round 
about him from heaven. When he addresses King 
Agrippa, he repeats to him the same story. Every 
one of the apostles speaks with the same accent 
and after the same fashion. Each one says, " I 
know whom I have believed." Would you see a 
picture of a kind of witness against which the 
scepticism of the world will never prevail, read 
the story of the blind man in the ninth chapter of 
John. The Jews endeavored to get him into an 
argument, but he refused to argue. " One thing I 
know ; whereas I was blind, now I see." On that 
experience the man was willing to stand. From 
that assertion the Sanhedrin could not drive him. 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 187 

Those eyes able now to see were mightier than 
all the arguments which could be brought against 
them. It is the open eyes looking out upon a 
world which Jesus has made new that furnish the 
testimony to the deity of Jesus which can never 
be destroyed. So long as he makes for human 
hearts all things new, men will honor him even 
as they honor the Father. 

The experience of the first century has been re- 
peated in every age. There were no greater theolo- 
gians in the nineteenth century than Frederick 
Denison Maurice in England and Horace Bushnell 
in the United States. The first was the son of a Uni- 
tarian clergyman, the second was born in an evangel- 
ical home, but in college became a sceptic. Both of 
them were obliged to pass through great struggles 
in the search for the truth. Maurice at last 
reached the point where the lower conception of 
Jesus was untenable. He came out into the 
experience of Peter and John and Paul. In writ- 
ing to a friend he said, " I did not receive this of 
man, neither was I taught it. Every glimpse I 
have caught has come to me through great con- 
fusion and darkness." He believed in Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit, because his nature demanded 
that kind of God. Bushnell came at last to the 
same conclusion. " God," he said, "is what we 
want, not a man. God revealed through man that 
we may see his heart and hide our guilty nature 
in the bosom of his love. I have a heart as well 



1 88 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

as a head, my heart wants the Father, my heart 
wants the Son, my heart wants the Holy Ghost, 
and one just as much as the other. My heart 
says the Bible has a trinity for me, and I mean to 
hold by my heart." 

But if you want the cream of the experiences of 
the Christian centuries, read your Hymn Book. 
It is in the poetry of the church that the experience 
of the Christian heart finds its sweetest and fullest 
expression. The greatest hymns which have ever 
been written have been hymns extolling the name 
of Jesus. The hymns which congregations sing 
the best are hymns which glorify his name. 

" Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee ; 
Let the water and the blood, 
From thy wounded side that flowed, 
Be of sin the double cure, 
Cleanse me from its guilt and power." 

" Jesus, lover of my soul, 

Let me to thy bosom fly 
While the billows near me roll, 

While the tempest still is high ; 
Hide me, O my Saviour ! hide, 

Till the storm of life is past ; 
Safe into the haven guide ; 

Oh, receive my soul at last ! " 

The writer of the first was a Calvinist, the writer 
of the second was an Arminian ; but Calvinists and 
Arminians are one in Christ Jesus. 

" Just as I am, without one plea, 
But that thy blood was shed for me, 
And that thou bid'st me come to thee, 
O Lamb of God, I come ! " 



THE DEITY OF JESUS 189 

That hymn was written by a woman ; but there is 
neither male nor female in Jesus Christ. 

" How sweet the name of Jesus sounds 
In a believer's ear ! 
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, 
And drives away his fear." 

That was written by a man who had been a godless 

sailor. 

" Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear, 
It is not night if thou be near : 
Oh, may no earth-born cloud arise 
To hide thee from thy servant's eyes ! " 

That is the prayer of an English scholar. 

" My faith looks up to thee, 
Thou Lamb of Calvary, 

Saviour divine ! 
Now hear me while I pray, 
Take all my guilt away, 
Oh, let me from this day 

Be wholly thine ! " 

" Art thou weary, art thou languid, 
Art thou sore distressed ? 
'Come to me,' saith One, 'and, coming, 
Be at rest.' " 

The first is from the heart of an American Con- 
gregationalism the second is the hymn of an 
eighth-century monk. 

" Jesus, the very thought of thee, 
With sweetness fills my breast ; 
But sweeter far thy face to see 
And in thy presence rest." 

That is from a Roman Catholic ; and this is from 
a Scotch Presbyterian : — 



190 THE DEITY OF JESUS 

" I heard the voice of Jesus say, — 

1 Come unto me and rest ; 
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down 

Thy head upon my breast!' 
I came to Jesus as I was, 

Weary, and worn, and sad ; 
I found in him a resting-place, 

And he hath made me glad." 

Roman Catholics and Protestants are all one in 

Christ Jesus. But why go on ? In the Hymn 

Book, we have a great company of men and women, 

gathered from all nations and kindreds and tongues. 

They stammer in their efforts to express what they 

feel. 

" Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing 

My dear Redeemer's praise! 

The glories of my God and King, 

The triumphs of his grace ! " 

Unable to put into verse the adoration of the re- 
deemed heart, they say to one another : — 

" Tell me the old, old story 

Of unseen things above, 
Of Jesus and his glory, 

Of Jesus and his love. 
Tell me the story simply, 

As to a little child, 
For I am weak and weary, 

And helpless and defiled. 

" Tell me the old, old story, 
Tell me the old, old story, 
Tell me the old, old story 
Of Jesus and his love." 



VIII 
THE MIRACLES 



VIII 
THE MIRACLES 

" What manner of man is this? " 

— Mark iv: 41. 

Let us think this morning about the miracles of 
Jesus. The Christian religion is incredible to a 
large number of people in our day because of the 
miraculous element which runs through the New 
Testament. The miracles are everywhere spoken 
against. Men are saying that Christianity would 
make a stronger appeal to the heart and conscience 
of the twentieth century if in some way the miracu- 
lous element could be dropped. Let us hold fast — 
these people say — to the ethical element and the 
Golden Rule, the Beatitudes, and all of the parables 
and discourses which inculcate reverence toward 
God and love toward men, but let us lay aside all 
miraculous stories as the creations of a credulous 
and superstitious age. 

Now it is not difficult to understand how this 
state of mind has come to be. It has been created 
in large measure by the emphasis which science 
has placed upon the fact that the universe is 
governed by unchanging law. Everything, says 
science, in the heavens above and in the earth 
beneath, is in the grip of laws which know neither 
o 193 



194 MIRACLES 

variableness nor shadow of turning. In a universe 
in which everything is thus ordered, and in which 
all processes go forward, advancing from step to 
step in a sequence which is invariable, a miracle 
seems to be an interloper. It is an eruption into 
the realm of ordered harmony. It seems to be an 
impertinence which ought to be rejected by the 
mind forthwith. And the scientific spirit is being 
reenforced by the spirit of historical investigation. 
It has become clear to all students of history that 
a broad stream of miraculous pretension flows down 
the centuries. Herodotus has his miraculous tales 
and Livy has his prodigies, and when we pass into 
Christian history, the centuries are simply weighted 
down with legends and traditions of the miracu- 
lous. So many of these tales are absurd and 
incredible that men look with suspicion upon all 
stories of the miraculous, no matter where the 
stories are found. If the miracles of the fifteenth, 
and tenth, and fifth, and fourth, and third, and 
second centuries are the creation of the religious 
imagination, why not throw the miracles of the 
New Testament into the same class and pitch 
them all behind us ? No member of the Christian 
Church can go far into the modern world without 
finding himself face to face with people who look 
upon the New Testament miracles as fables, and 
who look down upon a person who accepts these 
stories as authentic history, with a smile half of 
pity and half of scorn. In the presence of such 



MIRACLES 195 

persons, what is a Christian to do? If a man 
accepts the miracles of the gospel, he ought to 
have good reasons for so doing, and if these rea- 
sons are clear to his own mind, he ought to be able 
to state them to those who look upon the New 
Testament as a book filled with outgrown supersti- 
tions. 

It is not possible for me in a single hour to take 
up the problem of the miracles in all its various 
relations and implications, nor is it possible for 
me to bring out all the evidences which can be 
adduced in favor of the reality of the miracles 
ascribed by the evangelists to Jesus. All I can 
do is to throw out a few suggestions indicating to 
you the direction in which the sanest modern 
scholarship is moving, and to lay down a few 
simple propositions upon which a man may stand 
if he wants to beat back the attack of those who 
ridicule belief in miracles as the action of a be- 
lated mind. 

It should be borne in mind at the start that 
the question of the miracles is not closed. Many 
people speak as though this whole question were 
closed, as though there were not two sides to it 
in the opinion of any sensible man, as though the 
door had been shut and locked and the key thrown 
away. Now all this is pure assumption. It is not 
a closed question which we are considering. If a 
man says, " You cannot prove that Jesus worked 
miracles," we may say with equal confidence, " You 



196 MIRACLES 

cannot prove that he did not." Not a man on 
this earth, be he scholar, philosopher, explorer, or 
scientist, can ever prove that these miraculous 
deeds ascribed to Jesus were never done. If it 
cannot be demonstrated that Jesus worked mira- 
cles, neither can it be demonstrated that he did 
not work them. So that we are all on the same 
footing, and there is room for the discussion of 
the question whether or not it is probable that 
these things took place in the manner in which 
the evangelists say they did. 

Nor should it be forgotten that it is not indubi- 
table proof of extraordinary mental acumen to toss 
the miracles aside as unworthy of study. Nothing 
is easier intellectually than to cut out of the New 
Testament the miraculous element. It requires no 
mental effort to do this, and after it is once done 
there are no perplexing problems remaining. It 
causes no more mental exertion to rub out these 
miracles than it does to rub out figures written on 
a slate. If a teacher hands to a boy a slate on 
which he has written down a few sets of figures, 
there are two courses open to that boy. He can 
rub the figures out. This requires no intellectual 
effort, and for that reason a boy is sometimes 
tempted to do it. Or he can do the other thing ; 
he can work at those figures, endeavoring to get 
out of them a solution. It may be he will cry 
before he gets through with them, and possibly he 
will have a headache before a solution has been 



MIRACLES 197 

reached ; but if he is a boy intellectually in earnest, 
he will hold fast to those figures until the problem 
is solved. It takes more intellectual effort to keep 
the figures on the slate than to rub them off. 
Now if any man wants to do the thing that is 
intellectually easy, by all means let him rub the 
miracles out. If he wants intellectual work, let 
him hold fast to the miracles, and say, " Climb, O 
my soul, to the heights of these great stories, and 
see if they are not windows opening out upon God 
and nature and man ! " For if these miracles are 
things which really happened, then they throw 
fresh light upon the nature of man as well as 
upon the heart of God. New problems at once 
come before us, and we must go to work afresh 
to think out the relations of God and man and 
nature to one another. 

If one hears it said that the miracles are impos- 
sible, a proper reply to offer is that the word " im- 
possible " is rather a hazardous word to use. It 
was once safe to use it, but the advance of modern 
science has taken it from our lips. It will not do 
at this date in the world's history to be dogmatic 
in regard to what is possible in the realm of fact. 
The meekest men on the earth to-day are the 
great scientists, — not the little men who rush into 
the morning newspapers and tell you that they have 
discovered something which they have not dis- 
covered at all, but the great scientists who under- 
stand most fully the immeasurable range of nature 



198 MIRACLES 

and the tiny reach of man's mind. Men who live 
close to nature become exceedingly modest. They 
realize they are simply children standing on the 
shore of a tiny island, and that at their feet there 
break the waves of an immeasurable and unex- 
plored sea. In a former age scientists dared to 
say what could happen and what could not. The 
great Laplace once declared that it is impossible 
that stones should fall out of tfcie heavens on the 
earth. Only about sixty years ago Auguste Comte 
declared it to be impossible for man by any means 
to determine the chemical composition of any of 
the heavenly bodies. The illustrious Stephenson 
asserted it to be impossible for the Mediterranean 
to be connected with the Red Sea. Did we not 
say, all of us, only the other day, that it was 
impossible to see through an oak plank six inches 
thick ? We once thought we could tell what could 
be and what could not be, but fuller knowledge has 
made us modest. A man has more presumption 
than wisdom who asserts with confidence that 
these New Testament miracles could not have 
happened. 

And if one should say that he must reject the 
miracles because he cannot believe that the laws 
of nature were ever violated, our reply is that a 
miracle is no violation of the laws of nature. 
Miracles are neither a violation of the laws of 
nature, nor a suspension of them, nor a modifi- 
cation of them. Every miracle known to the New 



MIRACLES 199 

Testament was undoubtedly done in accordance 
with the laws of nature. When we talk about the 
laws of nature, we refer simply to the laws of 
nature which we ourselves have some knowledge 
of ; but what are these laws ? Name them. How 
many have you ? Have you named them all ? 
Would you dare say that you have them all? 
Until you are sure that you know all the laws of 
nature, you cannot say that a miracle is a violation 
of natural law. Many laws of nature have been 
discovered only recently. It was yesterday that 
Marconi got hold of a law by means of which he 
has been able to perform what seems to me the 
most wonderful miracle wrought within the last 
hundred years. 

Now if the great scientists can thrust their hands 
into the soft walls of the temple which we call the 
universe far enough to touch forces by means of 
which they are able to work the miracles of the 
modern world, why should it be thought a thing 
incredible that God's only begotten Son should 
thrust his hand down deep enough into the uni- 
verse to touch forces by means of which he could 
accomplish all the wondrous things spoken of in 
the gospels ? If we could see the universe as it is, 
we should undoubtedly see that everything which 
Jesus did was done according to law. No law was 
ever violated by him in any work he did. But here 
the question may arise : Can the course of nature 
be changed ? Is it likely that once in Palestine the 



200 MIRACLES 

course of nature was really changed ? In reply to 
such inquiries we may fairly say that we ordinary men 
are able to change the course of nature, and that 
indeed to an extent quite surprising. In the course 
of nature this book lies here before me on the desk. 
It is natural for it to lie there. But I can pick it 
up and hold it above my head. In doing this I am 
not violating the law of gravitation, nor am I sus- 
pending it, for the force of gravitation to my certain 
knowledge is still at work. I am not interfering 
with the law of gravity in any manner, but am 
simply working the force of my will into the force 
of gravitation in such a way as to get an outcome 
that would never have been obtained except for 
the exercise of my will. Now if an ordinary man 
can work his will into this complex of forces which 
we call nature, in such a way as to get out of nature 
products which nature if left to herself would never 
produce, why should not the Son of God be able 
to work his will into the winds and the waves, into 
blind eyes and shrivelled nerves to such an ex- 
tent as to bring forth results at which the world 
marvels ? 

I have a little piece of land in New Hampshire, 
and the land for all I know has been lying there 
for hundreds of thousands of years. In all that 
time it has never brought forth one single potato. 
The course of nature has had freedom through all 
the hundred thousand years, and if that land were 
not interfered with, it might lie there a hundred 



MIRACLES 201 

million years without bringing forth a potato. But 
if I scratch the soil a little and toss into it a few- 
pieces of potato (just enough to give the soil an 
idea of what a potato is like), nature immediately 
takes the hint and brings forth a whole basketful of 
potatoes. I have changed the course of nature. 
God has made it possible for man thus to change 
nature's course. To a potato-bug sitting on the 
fence, I am a worker of miracles. Now if a man 
can change the course of nature, and compel nature 
to do what nature would never do if left to itself, 
why should it be deemed a thing incredible for 
God's only begotten Son so to change the course 
of nature as to bring forth the products narrated 
by the evangelists ? It will be safer then to give 
up the use of that word " impossible " altogether. 
With God all things are possible. 

The strongest thing which any man can say 
against the miracles is that they are to him in- 
credible. But no man has a right to use that word 
until he has studied the evidence, and found out 
whether the miracles are credible or not. The 
credibility of the miracles is simply a question of 
evidence. The evidence must be sifted and 
weighed before any verdict is given. No man is 
fit to sit on a jury who decides the case before 
he has heard a word of evidence. Whether it is 
credible or not, the evidence for the miracles of 
the New Testament is voluminous. A man can- 
not set himself up in this field as a judge before 



202 MIRACLES 

he has done some hard and honest work. A book- 
keeper cannot look up from his books and say in a 
careless way, "Ah, those things are all preposter- 
ous ! " A merchant has no right to say while he 
is eating his lunch, " I think those stories are in- 
credible." . A man cannot jump in from the street 
and say, " I will give you an opinion regarding 
this matter, those stories are all discredited." The 
wise man will wait until the evidence is in before 
he gives his answer. When therefore you hear a 
man talking about the incredibility of the miracu- 
lous stories of the New Testament, simply ask him 
whether or not he has sifted and weighed the evi- 
dence. If he tells you he has never given any 
time or thought to the evidence, it might be sug- 
gested to him that all things considered it would 
be well for him to ascertain what can be said in 
their support. 

But suppose a man says he does not care to study 
the subject at all ? He reminds you that nothing 
is so common as stories of the marvellous. John 
says Jesus worked miracles ; Tacitus says Ves- 
pasian worked miracles. As Tacitus was evidently 
mistaken, so John must have been mistaken also. 
This is a kind of argument which is common. Oh, 
the superficiality of many men and women who 
imagine themselves to be wise ! The Christian 
church has a Bible, and we are told that every 
religion has a Bible, and if every religion has a 
Bible, then, of course, all Bibles are alike. They 



MIRACLES 203 

are all good, and all helpful, and our Bible differs 
in only minor points from the Bibles of the other 
great religions of the world. That is the fashion 
of much of our modern reasoning. A man who 
has gotten all his knowledge of the Bibles of the 
world from the headlines of newspapers and from a 
half dozen articles in some magazine finds no diffi- 
culty in throwing all the Bibles of the world into 
the same class, but scholars who have given thought 
to the subject, and who have studied all the sacred 
writings of the world, place the Bible in a class by 
itself. There is no other book in all the world like 
our Scriptures. 

The same sort of reasoning is often heard from 
men who talk about the Trinity. The Christian 
religion has a Trinity, and so also, they say, has 
Buddhism, and so also had the old Egyptian reli- 
gions, and so have many other religions. Of course 
the trinities are all alike, and all of them to be 
discarded ! But the man w r ho tosses the doctrine 
of the Trinity as taught by the Christian church 
into a class along with the trinities of other 
religions, proves by his action that he knows 
nothing of the subject concerning which he is 
speaking. The doctrine of the Trinity as taught 
by the Christian church is not at all like any Trin- 
ity known to any other religion under heaven. 

When we come then to the subject of miracles, 
we must learn how to discriminate. Because there 
were miracles in the Middle Ages, it does not follow 



204 MIRACLES 

that those miracles were like the miracles recorded 
in the New Testament. The name is the same, 
the differences are world wide. The New Testa- 
ment miracles are sane, the mediaeval miracles are 
nearly all wild, extravagant, absurd, crazy. There 
is evidence for the miracles of the New Testament ; 
for most of the miracles of the mediaeval ages there 
is little or none. There was a cause for the 
miracles of the New Testament ; for most of the 
mediaeval miracles there was none. There is a 
person in the New Testament around which the 
miracles gather. There is no such personality in 
the Middle Ages. There are no miraculous stories 
in the world like those in the New Testament. 
Some people speak as though it were a very 
easy thing for the human imagination to create 
miraculous stories. It is indeed easy to construct 
stories of a certain sort, but not easy to construct 
such stories as those of the evangelists. After 
Jesus' death various stories sprang up concerning 
miraculous deeds which he did when he was a 
child. All these stories are ridiculous and disgust- 
ing. He made birds out of clay and bade them fly. 
He turned boys who ran away from him into kids. 
He struck dead a teacher who scolded him. He 
caused a tree to bend over that he might get the 
fruit which grew on it. That is the sort of stories 
which the imagination can create. Or if we go 
into the Middle Ages, we read of pieces of gold fall- 
ing from heaven ; of a mighty serpent ascending a 



MIRACLES 205 

pyre in order to be burned in the presence of the 
people ; of floods rising to the roofs of churches, 
but not entering the doors ; of robbers being held 
up by the white hands of the Virgin Mary, and 
being saved from merited death. The mediaeval 
stories are violent and abnormal. We have no 
right to class them with the miracles of the gospels. 
Now because one of two things is false, does it fol- 
low that both must be false ? I hold in my hands 
two greenbacks. One greenback is a counterfeit. 
The authorities at Washington City have passed 
judgment on it. Shall I, therefore, say that the 
other greenback is counterfeit? "O judgment, 
thou art fled to brutish beasts ! " and men have lost 
their reason if they argue after that fashion. There 
are, indeed, in the literature of every people spuri- 
ous miracles in abundance, but because this is so, 
we shall not surrender the miracles of the gospels. 
But some one says : If things narrated in the 
gospels were reported to have happened some- 
where on the earth to-day, would you believe the 
report ? Our reply is that we should not be likely 
to believe any such report, for the reason that no 
miracle is credible unless there are good reasons 
for its occurrence. Is6lated marvels must always 
be looked at with suspicion. An isolated miracle 
is a sort of monster. The miracles of the New 
Testament, however, are a part of a great historic 
movement. They are not isolated wonders. They 
are clustered round one supreme person. They 



206 MIRACLES 

belong to one vast historic movement which starts 
in Abraham and culminates in Jesus of Nazareth. 
There is a great mountain range of spiritual 
achievement running across the expanse of two 
thousand years, its mountain peaks glistening in 
the light of heaven, all the peaks leading up at 
last to one colossal summit that overtops them 
all. About the existence of this mountain range 
there is no dispute. It is something unique in 
the history of the world. Nowhere else is there 
such spiritual devotion, spiritual character, or 
spiritual achievement. In the presence of such 
a colossal moral miracle, why should it be won- 
dered at if we find in connection with it physical 
miracles too ? The New Testament miracles are 
credible because they are attributed to Jesus of 
Nazareth. It is not hard to believe that he worked 
miracles. Great things were natural and easy to 
him. He never strained in the doing of them. 
He never spoke of his acts as though they were 
wonderful. The most miraculous things he ever 
did were as natural to him as our most ordinary 
acts are to us. A person who has moulded the 
heart-life of races and created new civilizations, as 
Jesus undoubtedly has done, may reasonably be 
believed to have said to the wind and to the sea, 
" Peace be still ! " 

In studying the evidences for the miracles of the 
New Testament, it is wise to begin with the study 
of the greatest miracle of them all — the resurrec- 



MIRACLES 207 

tion of Jesus. St. Paul stakes all his teaching on 
the truth of the resurrection. We can afford to do 
the same. For the resurrection of Jesus there is 
stronger proof than can be adduced in support 
of any other event in ancient history. Paul was 
converted four years after the death of Jesus. A 
few years later he went to Jerusalem to have a 
talk with Peter. You can imagine the conversa- 
tion. Peter was a great talker. Even in the 
presence of Jesus himself he could hardly be 
restrained. How he must have talked to a man 
whom he recognized as his equal ! Nor was Paul 
slow of speech. His mind was marvellously alert. 
He was a man who knew how to see difficulties 
and to ask questions. What a stream of talk must 
have flowed through those days in which Peter and 
Paul were together. Cannot you imagine you hear 
Paul saying : " Now, Peter, tell me, did Jesus do 
this ? Did Jesus do that ? Did he say this ? Did 
he say that ? What did he tell you by the sea ? 
What did he say in the upper chamber? What 
did you find in the open tomb ? What happened 
on the day of Pentecost ? " Paul never left Peter 
until Peter had told the whole story from begin- 
ning to end. A few years later Paul in the course 
of his work had occasion to write to the church 
which he had founded in Corinth. That letter has 
been preserved. It is a part of our New Testa- 
ment. It was written within twenty-five years of 
the death of Jesus. That it was written by Paul 



208 MIRACLES 

is admitted by every sane critic. Men who have 
cut other parts of the New Testament to shreds 
have stayed their hands on coming to this first 
letter to the Corinthians. If this letter is not 
genuine, then we can give credence to no historical 
document whatsoever. In this letter Paul takes 
up the resurrection of Jesus. Among other things 
he says : " I delivered unto you first of all that 
which I also received. How that Christ died for 
our sins according to the scriptures, and that he 
was buried and raised the third day according 
to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, 
then to the twelve, then he appeared to above five 
hundred persons at once, of whom the greater part 
remain until now." That is, over two hundred and 
fifty people are still alive who saw Jesus after he 
had risen from the dead. 

This throws light on the way in which those early 
witnesses were regarded. The Christian church 
in those days was small; it was surrounded on 
every side by foes. Every Christian was precious 
in the eyes of his brethren. A peculiar sanctity 
belonged to those who had seen Jesus before his 
ascension. The death of any one of them was an 
event. Every decrease in that immortal company 
was noted. The church kept itself posted as to 
how many of these witnesses were still alive. Paul 
is able to say to the Christians in Corinth that over 
two hundred and fifty of the Palestinian witnesses 
are still living. " Then he appeared to James, then 



MIRACLES 209 

to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to 
me also." The first facts he had taught the church 
in Corinth on the authority of Peter, but in addi- 
tion to the testimony of Peter and the other apos- 
tles he had his own personal experience. How- 
absurd, therefore, for any member of the Corin- 
thian church to deny the resurrection of the dead. 
"If there is no resurrection of the dead," he says, 
"neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ 
has not been raised, then is our preaching vain. 
Your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found 
false witnesses of God, because we have testified 
of God, that he raised up Christ. If in this life 
only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men 
most pitiable." 

That Paul believed that Jesus rose from the 
dead does not admit of question. And Paul was 
no dunce. He was so great an intellectual 
giant that he dominates a large part of Chris- 
tian thought to-day. And what Paul believed all 
the other disciples believed also. You may say 
they might have been mistaken in their belief, 
but if they were deluded, it was a costly de- 
lusion. It is incredible that men should ever have 
acted as those men acted if they did not believe 
with all their mind and heart and soul what they 
preached. James would never have allowed his 
head to be cut off with a sword if he had not be- 
lieved that Jesus rose from the dead. Nor would 
Stephen have allowed himself to be stoned if he 



210 MIRACLES 

had not believed Jesus was risen. All of the 
apostles one after another were killed except John. 
They all died in the same belief. Now these men 
either believed a truth or they believed a delusion. 
Which do you think is the more probable ? If 
they believed a truth, then everything is turning 
out as it ought, but if they believed a delusion, then 
the whole Christian church is built upon that de- 
lusion, and we find that a delusion has perennial 
power to lift civilization Godward. 

Delusions ordinarily are short-lived. As a gen- 
eral rule a delusion causes mischief, but here is a 
delusion which has proved to be the one greatest 
blessing of the ages. There are in the world to-day 
five hundred and fifty millions of Christians. Only 
nineteen centuries after Jesus' death the Christians 
outnumber the adherents of any other religion on 
the face of the earth. We are just in the begin- 
ning of Christian history. If only nineteen cen- 
turies after the crucifixion over one-third of the 
race has given Jesus a name which is above every 
name, it is not hard to believe that the time is 
coming when the millions of Africa and of China, 
of India and Persia, and the islands of the sea will 
confess that he is Lord indeed. 

Now this story of the resurrection is inextricably 
embedded in a history that is full of miracles. If 
the miracles formed a sort of fringe to the story of 
Jesus' life, we could shear them off, or if the miracles 
were golden tassels hanging to the corners of the 



MIRACLES 211 

gospel story, we could use our penknife. But the 
miraculous element is so interwoven with the other 
elements that it is impossible to get it out. Allu- 
sions to the miracles run into the narrative of 
Jesus' sayings in the most remarkable manner. 
Nicodemus goes to see Jesus by night, and among 
other things he says, "Rabbi, we know that thou 
art a teacher come from God, for no man can do 
these miracles that thou doest except God be with 
him." Jesus passes condemnation on the cities of 
Galilee, saying, " If the mighty works which have 
been done in thee had been done in Tyre and Sidon, 
they would have repented long ago in sackcloth 
and ashes." Peter on the day of Pentecost, ad- 
dresses his countrymen thus, "Ye men of Israel, 
hear these words : Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
approved of God among you by miracles and won- 
ders and signs, which God did by him in the midst 
of you, as ye yourselves also know." The words 
of Jesus and the words of his apostles move on 
the assumption that Jesus is performing miracles. 
There is a thrill of wonder in the very atmosphere 
of the New Testament writings. If you cut out 
of the New Testament every account of a miracle, 
and every reference or allusion to one, you have a 
book which is a mass of ruins. 

But even if you destroy the New Testament, there 
are some things which cannot be destroyed. One 
of these is the Lord's Day. From the days of 
Moses down to Jesus the Hebrews had punctili- 



212 MIRACLES 

ously observed the seventh day of the week as a 
day of rest. It was one of the most sacred of all 
their institutions. The Pharisees were sticklers 
for the letter of the law, and no Pharisee in his 
right mind would any more have thought of chang- 
ing the day of rest from the seventh day to some 
other than he would have thought of shifting the 
foundations of the earth. But yet, for some rea- 
son, after the death of Jesus, the day of rest was 
changed from the seventh to the first. And it 
was changed by Jews. Paul, who was proud to say 
that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, uses this 
language in writing to the Corinthians, "Upon 
the first day of the week let every one of you lay 
by him in store as God hath prospered him." That 
is only one of many references. Why the first 
day ? Certainly something has happened. There 
has been a revolution, and the revolution has been 
brought about by no ordinary occurrence. What 
has given a sanctity to the first day of the week 
which lifts it above the level of all other days ? 
There is no explanation so simple and credible as 
the explanation which the New Testament itself 
gives : Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of 
the week. Through the Christian centuries the 
Lord's Day stands a monument which storms and 
revolutions cannot overturn, testifying to the glo- 
rious fact that Jesus rose. And what is the mean- 
ing of our Easter Sunday? There is a line of 
Easters running straight back to the first century, 



MIRACLES 213 

and there the line stops. There was no Easter 
before Jesus died. Why should one Sunday of the 
year be singled out and given a glory which belongs 
to none other ? Surely it must commemorate some 
extraordinary event in the experience of Christian 
people. There is no interpretation of Easter so 
reasonable as that which the New Testament sup- 
plies : it is the anniversary of the day on which the 
Prince of Glory rose. Here then, in addition to 
the New Testament, we have the Christian church, 
the Lord's Day, and Easter — all bearing witness 
to the fact of Jesus' resurrection. If proofs such 
as these cannot establish the reality of an event, 
then nothing in this world can be established. 

Having made certain of the resurrection of Jesus, 
the greatest of the miracles, we need not tarry in 
our consideration of the others. Evidences equally 
strong cannot be brought in support of the other 
miracles. They become credible because they are 
associated with the miracle of the resurrection. 
If Christ was indeed a person so unique and tran- 
scendently great as to be able to burst the bonds 
of death, and to show himself alive to men, then 
it is not difficult to believe that he said to sick 
men, "Arise and walk"; or that at his word a 
storm fell dead at his feet. The miracle of the 
resurrection is so strong that it can carry all the 
other miracles on its back. 

The miracles do not hold the place in apologetics 
which they held a hundred years ago. All through 



214 MIRACLES 

the eighteenth century it was customary for men, 
in proving the divine origin and authority of the 
Christian religion, to hold up prophecy and miracles 
as the strongest evidences which could be adduced. 
Christ did indeed come from heaven, men said, 
and what he said has divine authority because he 
worked these miracles, and because he fulfilled 
the prophecies. That was the line of argument 
pursued in the days of Paley. But ever since the 
time of Coleridge, Christian scholarship has placed 
increasing emphasis on the contents of the Chris- 
tian religion. Look at this character, men now 
say, — listen to these words. Do you not know in 
your heart that a teacher such as this must have 
come from heaven ? 

Christianity itself, in its essence, bears witness to 
its truthfulness. And along with this we have an 
ever deepening and growing life in the Christian 
church. We cannot prove to the mind of our day 
and generation that Christianity is indeed divine 
because of anything that may have happened nine- 
teen hundred years ago. The proof which carries 
weight to-day is a spiritual life in the souls of indi- 
vidual men strong enough to overcome evil and to 
reproduce the spiritual graces which are displayed 
before our eyes in the gospels. There are indica- 
tions in the New Testament that we are not to rely 
upon the miracles of Jesus forever as prime evi- 
dence of his divine mission. His miracles are 
most abundant in the earliest traditions. Matthew 



MIRACLES 21 $ 

wrote down some of his recollections of Jesus. 
Mark, who was a special friend of Peter, wrote 
down many things which Peter remembered. 
Later on a Gentile physician, Luke by name, 
using the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of 
Mark, and also other documents, compiled the 
third of our synoptic gospels. And in each of 
these three gospels the miracles are abundant, 
but when we come to the gospel of St. John, the 
miracles are only half as many as are to be found 
in the first three gospels. John represents Jesus 
as speaking almost slightingly of his mighty deeds. 
To his disciples the Master is reported to have said, 
" Believe that I am in the Father, and the Father 
in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake." 
In the letters of Paul there is but one miracle 
insisted upon, and that is made the foundation of 
everything, — the resurrection. 

In the writings of the great preachers of the 
second century 'the miracles are not allowed to 
hold a foremost place. They seem to be steadily 
kept in the background. There were other argu- 
ments which the preachers of the second century 
felt would be far more convincing to the people of 
their day than the narration of miraculous stories. 
What was true in the second century is doubly 
true in our own. The preachers of to-day keep 
the eyes of the people on the central figure in the 
gospel story, — Jesus of Nazareth. They say to 
men : " Follow him ! Give yourself to him ! Take 



2l6 MIRACLES 

his yoke upon you and learn of him." And 
it is through fellowship with Jesus himself that 
one comes to believe that the gospel history is 
true. 

Possibly a page of my own experience would be 
of interest to some young man here who may be 
perplexed in his efforts to find the truth. Nine- 
teen years ago I found it exceedingly difficult to 
accept the stories of the miracles. I had been a 
teacher of chemistry, and later on a student of law, 
and the result of my entire education had been to 
give my mind a bias against all miraculous stories 
of every sort. One day I had a talk with Phillips 
Brooks in his study. By and by the conversa- 
tion came round to the miracles. I said to him 
in great earnestness, "Dr. Brooks, must I believe 
the miracles ? " It was a vital matter to me at 
that time, because I wanted to be a preacher, 
and I felt I could not accept them. His prompt 
reply to my question was, " I should not say 
that you must believe the miracles, I should 
say that you may." That little word "may" had 
magic in it. It changed the complexion of the 
problem entirely. I saw at once that I had been 
approaching the question in a wrong temper. I 
had felt that the church was trying to drive my 
mind, and against this compulsion I rebelled. I 
respected my intellect. I believed that it had rights 
which the church of God was bound to respect. I 
would not allow myself to be browbeaten even by 



MIRACLES 217 

the apostles themselves. I had never heard any 
professor in a college say to his students on the 
threshold of a study, you must believe thus and 
thus ; but when the great Boston preacher said, 
you may believe these things,- — there are reasons 
for believing them, — the pressure was removed, 
the mental irritation passed away, and with my 
mind acting freely, I plunged into a study of Chris- 
tian evidences with an alacrity which I had not 
been able to command before. 

I imagine that many a young man is repelled 
from Christianity by a misapprehension of the 
temper of Jesus of Nazareth. I heard a lawyer 
one day give his opinion concerning the unreason- 
ableness of Christianity. He did not often go to 
church, nor was he much acquainted with the New 
Testament. He knew, however, that in one of the 
gospels some such sentence as this occurred : " Be- 
lieve and you will be saved. If you do not believe, 
you will be damned." That was sufficient for the 
lawyer. He wanted nothing to do with a religion 
so peremptory and dictatorial. But if a man will 
read the New Testament carefully, he will find, as 
Matthew Arnold found, that the shining character- 
istic of the teaching of Jesus is its sweet reason- 
ableness. Jesus was always reasonable. He always 
spoke to the reason. " Have you not read ? " 
"What thinkest thou?" "You yourselves judge 
what is right." This is the manner in which he 
approached thoughtful men. He never shoved 



2l8 MIRACLES 

a man. He was full of truth, men were also 
sure that he was full of grace. When men, then, 
assert that Christianity says, "Believe or be 
damned ! " you can boldly say there is nothing of 
the sort in the New Testament. The word 
" damned " is not to be found in the New Testa- 
ment, not the " damned" which you hear men speak 
on the street. It is a foul and vulgar word into 
which the venom of a thousand blasphemous lips 
has been poured. Jesus never used such a word, 
nor should we. The proper word is " condemned," 
and in order to find out what the word condemned 
means, we must read the context. Jesus is giving 
his apostles their great commission. He says to 
them : " Go ye into all the world and preach the 
gospel to every creature. He that believeth shall 
be saved, and he that believeth not shall be con- 
demned." Believeth what ? That Jesus stilled a 
storm, that Jesus opened blind eyes, that Jesus 
turned water into wine ? No. He that believeth 
the good news, the great truth that God is our 
Father, and that man is his child, and that all men 
are brethren, and that a man's life lies in service — 
this is the gospel. And who doubts that if a man 
believes this and lives this, he shall be saved ? 
And who would deny that a man is condemned 
who refuses to think of God as his Father, who 
refuses to believe that he is God's child, and who 
persists in living like a brute instead of a man ? Is 
it not clear that such a man is condemned — must 



MIRACLES 219 

be condemned in his own conscience and by his 
own heart, by the best men, and by God ? 

What shall we say in answer to the questions : 
Has any man outside the Christian church a 
right to join it until he can honestly say that he 
accepts all the miracles ? And if a man is a mem- 
ber of the Christian church, has he any right to 
retain his membership if he comes to a point where 
he can no longer honestly say that he believes in 
the miraculous deeds of Jesus ? These are impor- 
tant questions, and an answer for them, I believe, is 
to be found in the New Testament. According 
to Paul, the supreme miracle is the resurrection. 
If a man denies that, he has gone as far as a 
man can go. 

Now, fortunately for us, one of the apostles 
denied for a season the resurrection. All the 
remaining ten believed ; he alone doubted. What 
did the ten do with him ? Did they disfellow- 
ship him ? No. They allowed him to retain his 
place. He continued to pray with them and to 
live with them. By remaining in their company, 
the day at last arrived when he came to see as 
they did and to rejoice in their experiences. If a 
man is ever going to believe in the resurrection of 
Jesus, he is far more likely to do it when he is in 
the presence of Christians than when he is away 
from their company. Paul followed the example 
of the apostles in Jerusalem. Certain members 
of the Corinthian church under the influence of 



220 MIRACLES 

Pagan society surrendered their belief in the 
resurrection of Jesus. Paul was grieved, but he 
did not drive those people out of the church. 
There was a man for whom Paul thought there 
was no room whatsoever in the Corinthian church. 
He was the man who openly violated one of the 
clear commandments of God, — a man who was 
morally corrupt, and who was living a life which 
was an open scandal to all decent men. " Put him 
out," Paul cried with indignation ; " don't you know 
that a little leaven will leaven the whole lump ? " 
The Christian church cannot afford to carry along 
with it men who openly and defiantly transgress the 
laws of morality ; but if men have doubts in regard 
to the interpretation of the New Testament, they 
are to be dealt with tenderly, instructed, persuaded. 
The error of their way of thinking is to be pointed 
out. They are to remain members of the Christian 
family, and grow as rapidly as they can and will to 
the full stature of instructed disciples in Christ. 

Every man who is seeking first the kingdom 
of God and his righteousness under the leader- 
ship of Jesus Christ has a right, I think, to come 
into the Christian church, and the right to stay 
there after he is once in, no matter what he 
thinks about any particular article of the creed. 
None of us is up to the standard. Each one of 
us falls short at some point or other. We are 
all moral delinquents. One man falls short in 
temper, another in disposition, another in the way 



MIRACLES 221 

he uses his time, another in the use of his money, 
another in his words, another in his home life, 
another in his business life, another in his treat- 
ment of his servants and inferiors. We are all 
sinners. We have all sinned and come short of 
the glory of God, but Christ is the friend of sin- 
ners. If our purpose is to do God's will, and our 
deep desire is to grow in grace, if our constant 
prayer is, " Create in me a clean heart, O God, 
and renew a right spirit within me," we certainly 
have a right to claim a place in the church. If 
moral delinquencies and shortcomings do not 
cause us to forfeit our place in the church, surely 
that place cannot be forfeited by our intellectual 
confusions and doctrinal aberrations. 

We are all more or less ignorant, we are all more 
or less confused, we all see through a glass darkly. 
All that the strongest of us can say is : "I count 
not myself to have apprehended. I press toward 
the mark for the high prize of God in Christ Jesus." 
And the prayer which we as a church need to offer 
continually is the prayer that Christ may more and 
more dwell in our hearts, till we all attain unto the 
unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son 
of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ. 



IX 

SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 



IX 

SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

" Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of 
the world. 1 ' — John i : 29. 

Let us think about sin, and its forgiveness. We 
enter a realm, through which it is difficult for one 
to make his way, because of the vast mysteries 
that press in upon him, and because of the innumer- 
able questions which spring up on every side. At 
every step a new by-path comes into view, enticing 
to the feet, and unless one keeps his eyes fixed 
steadily on the goal, he is certain to be lost in the 
mazes of speculation. Sin ! The very mention of 
the word stirs the mind to action. Whence did 
sin come ? What was its origin ? How did it get 
into God's universe ? That is a question to which 
no satisfying answer has ever yet been given. 
Why did sin come ? Why does God allow a serpent 
to crawl across the surface of his fair creation ? 
That question is as old as the race, and before it 
the human mind stands dazed and dumb. What 
are the effects of sin ? To what extent does it 
weaken the will ? How far can human responsi- 
bility be carried ? This question carries us into 
Q 225 



226 SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

the realm of the divine sovereignty and human 
freedom, an arena in which the mightiest intellects 
of the ages have grappled with a perennial problem, 
their discussions filling volumes which cannot be 
numbered. 

And what is the end of sin ? We peer into the 
future as far as the mind's eye can look, but the 
end is not in sight. There is no other subject 
about which it is so easy to theorize, and to spec- 
ulate, as this subject of sin. Strange to say, few 
subjects have had such fascination for the mind 
of man. Men have a morbid desire to think about 
it, to brood over it. Philosophers have said from 
generation to generation, " Come now, let us dis- 
cuss this problem once more ; let us compare our 
arguments and see to what conclusions we shall 
come." So fascinating have been the problems 
which evil has presented to the mind, that men 
have sometimes become intoxicated by the luxury 
of discussion, and have lost sight of the heinous- 
ness of sin, and the imperative necessity of getting 
rid of it. In these sermons we have nothing to do 
with speculation. We are endeavoring to hold our 
eyes steadfastly on certain facts. Our constant 
question is, What does Christianity teach concern- 
ing this thing, and what are the reasons for thinking 
that the teaching of Christianity is true ? 

The Bible is the most practical book ever written. 
It is almost entirely free from speculation. Its 
eyes are always fixed upon practical ends. It has 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 22? 

been so wound round by theories and speculations, 
that many of us do not realize what a matter-of-fact 
and practical book it is. To many men who are 
not acquainted with it, it is a book of daring 
guesses and lovely dreams ; but to the man who 
knows it, it is the one book in all the world which 
hugs facts and hugs them close. All the great 
Hebrews, from Moses to John the Baptist, stood 
with both feet securely planted on the earth. Not 
one of them is gifted with the powers of speculation, 
not one of them is a weaver of fancies, or a dreamer 
of dreams. While the Egyptians and Babylonians 
and other Oriental peoples were losing themselves 
in fantastic speculations concerning the origin of 
the world and the end of it, the great men of 
Palestine grappled in desperate earnestness with 
the facts and forces of conduct. They saw life, not 
life in the clouds, but life on the earth, steadily, 
and they saw it whole. 

In all the Scriptures there is no mind so sane 
and so practical as the mind of Jesus. Of all the 
teachers whom humanity has known, he is the 
least given to speculation, he cares the most for 
the problems of our everyday, ordinary life. He 
constantly disappoints the idle curiosity. The 
problems which lay round him he did not touch. 
The mysteries by which men's minds were baffled 
had no light shot through them from his lips. 
When his disciples attempted to lead him aside 
from the plain path of his mission, he curbed them. 



228 SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

He would not allow them either to speculate or to 
dream. When they asked him concerning times 
and seasons, his reply was, "You shall have power 
to do your work." This was his temper always, 
this was his attitude toward life. Men are not in 
this world to see the solution of all problems, or to 
pluck out the heart of all mysteries ; they are in 
the world to do the work which God has given 
them to do. 

Jesus is therefore disappointing in his treatment 
of human sin. The origin of evil he never touched. 
He left that problem as opaque as it was before he 
came. He seemed to take for granted that the 
origin of evil is a problem to be thought about and 
worked out in some other world than this. Nor 
did he ever touch the question why evil is allowed, 
nor did he ever discuss the sovereignty of God and 
the freedom of man. He simply put the two great 
facts together: God is king, man is free — and 
those two facts must be held together, both in this 
world and in the next. Nor did he tell men what 
is the end of sin. In his parables we see the re- 
treating forms of incorrigible transgressors passing 
into the outer darkness, but our eyes cannot follow 
them through the gloom. If we come to the New 
Testament desirous only of teaching which will 
satisfy our curiosity, we are doomed to disappoint- 
ment. 

When the Bible touches sin, it grasps it with the 
rough hand of a man in earnest. It acknowledges 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 229 

the presence of it, it confesses the reality of it, it 
emphasizes the malignity and the awful danger of 
it, and stirs up in the heart a passionate desire to 
get rid of it. That fact is the only thing essential. 
It is not necessary for us to know either the begin- 
ning of evil or the end of it ; it is enough to know 
that sin is a burden to the heart of God, and that 
God has provided a way for our deliverance. Let 
us look then this morning at the Bible teaching 
concerning sin. 

According to the Scriptures, all men are sinners. 
"All have sinned and come short of the glory of 
God." " There is none righteous; no, not one. 
There is none that doeth good ; no, not one." " If 
we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." 
" If ye being evil know how to give good gifts to 
your children." " When you pray say, forgive us 
our debts." Now is this teaching true to our experi- 
ence ? Is there a man here who feels he is not a 
sinner ? Did you ever see a person who claimed 
his life to have been altogether innocent ? Have 
you ever read in history of a human being without 
sin ? Here and there we find a man who seems to 
be unconscious of his sinfulness ; but his uncon- 
sciousness rises from the fact that he is dead in 
sin. His conscience has become calloused. His 
spiritual vision has become darkened. He has 
become brazen-faced by a long course in sinning, 
so that his heart does not cry out for pardon. But 
all men when they are in their right mind know 



230 SIN } AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

that they have sinned. And the better the man, 
the more conscious he is of his sinfulness. The 
coarse and careless man on the streets may never 
speak of his sins ; but if you draw near to the closet 
in which some genuine saint of sensitive conscience 
and tender heart is pouring out his soul unto God, 
you will hear him praying the publican's prayer, 
"God be merciful to me a sinner." When Christi- 
anity teaches that all men have sinned, Christianity 
speaks no more than the truth. 

The Bible asserts that sin has left its black mark 
on every part of human nature. The mind has 
been affected by transgression. Our thoughts are 
wayward, uncontrollable. We sin often in thought, 
and we do it easily. The heart has not escaped. 
Our emotional life is tainted ; our feelings are not 
the feelings of a being who has never sinned. The 
will also is corrupted. It is both weak and rebel- 
lious. We sin in our choices as well as in our 
thoughts and our feelings. Our soul is a kingdom, 
and the trail of the serpent is over every province 
of the kingdom. There are thorns in every field. 
There is no section of our nature which has escaped 
the blighting touch of sin ; no, not one. This is 
what theology calls " total depravity." It is a mis- 
chievous phrase, because not readily understood, 
and for that reason it is no longer used in public 
speech. It has an ugly sound and conveys false 
impressions. When men in the street say that a 
man is totally depraved, they mean that he is as 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 23 1 

bad as he can be ; that the last spark of goodness 
has gone out of him. But that is not what the 
theologians mean when they write of total deprav- 
ity. They mean that the corruption of sin has 
extended to every part of man's nature ; that every 
department of his life is vitiated by transgression ; 
that the entire circumference of his life has been 
traversed by sin. When the church asserts that 
man in his entire nature has been hurt by trans- 
gression, it speaks only the truth. 

The Bible uses the word " sin " in two significa- 
tions. It says that sometimes sin is an act and 
sometimes it is a state. As an act it is a trans- 
gression of the law. We all know what sin as an 
act is. It is a lie, a theft, a bitter word, a cruel 
deed, some specific movement of heart, or mind, 
or tongue, which brings upon us the sense of con- 
demnation. It is the sins of action which trouble 
our conscience most when we are young. But sin 
of action is not all. There is a sin of condition. 
We may be sinners and still be doing no sinful act. 
Our heart may be ungrateful, and an ungrateful 
heart is a sinful heart. We may have in our heart 
no filial feelings toward the All-good Father, and 
the heart that does not cry Abba Father is less 
than a human heart ought to be. This vitiated 
condition of our nature is due in part to our own 
repeated wrong choices and actions, and it is due 
in part to the continued transgressions of our an- 
cestors. Sin is self-registering, and every wrong 



232 SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

choice leaves its mark upon the fibre of the man 
that makes it. And these evil effects are trans- 
mitted in the blood from generation to generation. 

Thus it is that we find ourselves in possession of a 
sinful nature ; the very ground of our life is sinful. 
Sin seems to run like a poison in the blood, and 
has an existence apart from our will. It is the sin 
of state or condition, and not the sin of act, which 
most disturbs us when we are old enough to know 
what kind of men God would have us be. In the 
seventh chapter of Romans Paul is describing not 
the sin of act, but the sin of condition. He says, 
"That which I do I allow not, for what I would, 
that do I not ; but what I hate, that do I." " Now 
it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in 
me. I delight in the law of God after the inward 
man ; but I see another law in my members, war- 
ring against the law of my mind, and bringing me 
into captivity to the law of sin which is in my 
members. O wretched man that I am ! who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death ? " Chris- 
tianity recognizes that a man is in a lost condition, 
and that without the new birth salvation is impos- 
sible. 

This sin of state is known in theology as origi- 
nal sin. The phrase covers the mass of sinful im- 
pulses and tendencies which have come down to us 
out of the past. Instead of speaking nowadays 
about original sin, however, we commonly use the 
word which science has made familiar to our ears, 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 233 

heredity. There is such a thing as inherited 
evil. We belong to a race of sinners. We are all 
bound up together in one great tragedy of trans- 
gression. When the Bible says we are sinners not 
only in act, but in state, the Bible speaks the truth. 

And now the Bible takes a step in advance 
which some of us may not be willing to follow. 
The Bible says that sin is heinous, it lies under 
the wrath of God. This is something we could not 
have known without the light of revelation. As 
it is impossible to know what man is in his full 
stature and dignity until the light of heaven falls 
upon him, so it is impossible to know sin in its 
length and breadth and height and depth until 
we see it in the light of Gethsemane and Golgotha. 
In one sense we may say that the consciousness 
of sin is universal. All men of all lands and times 
have realized that they were not right. In all 
lands there have been sacrifices and forms of 
worship instituted to appease the wrath of an 
offended deity. But in no race of men was there 
ever developed any such consciousness of sin as 
was developed in the heart of the Hebrew people. 

The Egyptians and Babylonians had their cata- 
logues of sins, but their sinfulness never troubled 
them as the sinfulness of the Hebrews troubled 
them. We may almost say that the ancient Greeks 
had no real conception of sin. The Greeks recog- 
nized the existence of vice, certain actions were to 
them unlovely, disagreeable, mischievous ; but the 



234 si &j AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

Greek people never felt the burden of its sinful- 
ness. The countrymen of Homer and of Pericles 
were the j oiliest and lightest hearted of all the 
peoples of the earth, as joyous and as sunny as the 
sea which broke into laughter on the shores of their 
lovely islands. The Romans were far more ear- 
nest than were the Greeks, but they had no deep 
consciousness of sin. We can hardly think of 
Julius Caesar shedding tears over his transgres- 
sions. Rome had her priests and her sacrifices, 
but her conception of sin had slight influence on 
either the personal or the national life. Chris- 
tianity is preeminently the religion which develops 
in its adherents a sense of sin. Buddhism, and 
Brahminism, and Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism, 
all recognize the existence of evil, and attempt to 
deal with it in different ways ; but in none of these 
religions is there a recognition of sin in the sense 
in which Christians use that word. 

It is impossible to have any adequate sense of 
sin without a great conception of God. It was be- 
cause the Hebrew prophets saw God to be high and 
lifted up that they felt themselves to be sinners. 
" I am but dust and ashes," says Abraham. " Be- 
hold, I am vile, I will lay my hand upon my mouth," 
says Job. " Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a 
man of unclean lips," says Isaiah. All the great 
Hebrews, from Abraham to John the Baptist, lie 
with their faces in the dust, crying, " God be mer- 
ciful to me a sinner ! " Where in any literature 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 235 

will you find a poem like the fifty-first psalm ? 
" Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy 
lovingkindness : according unto the multitude of 
thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. 
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse 
me from my sin. For I acknowledge my trans- 
gressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against 
thee, and thee only, have I sinned, and done this 
evil in thy sight." " Create in me a clean heart, 
O God, and renew a right spirit within me." 
" Cast me not away from thy presence ; and take 
not thy Holy Spirit from me." The man who wrote 
that is a Shakespeare in the realm of spiritual 
expression. 

But it is not until we come into the presence 
of Jesus of Nazareth that we are able to see sin 
in all its terrible magnitude and malignity. The 
men of Palestine in the first century were busily 
engaged in discussing the grades and punishments 
of ceremonial sins. Jesus seizes upon these su- 
perficial statements of the Rabbis, and burns them 
up in the fierce fires of his indignation. His 
keen eyes see that sin is not a ceremonial thing, 
but a moral thing. It is not a matter of mere 
outward conduct, but of word and thought and 
feeling. Leaving the surface of life he plunges at 
once to the inner fountains from which flow im- 
pulses and motives and words, and says that a man 
must be changed at the very centre of his being, 
— he must be born again. 



236 SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

According to Jesus, there is nothing terrible in 
the world but sin. It is the thing to be shunned, 
feared, hated. " If your right eye causes you 
to sin, pluck it out ; it is better to lose an eye 
than to do wrong. If your right hand causes you 
to sin, cut it off; it is better to have no right 
hand than to do wrong. Beware how you tempt 
others to sin ; it were better that a millstone 
should be hanged about a man's neck, and that 
the man should be cast into the midst of the sea, 
rather than that he should cause a human being 
to do wrong." That is not the language which 
you and I use, nor is it the feeling which is in 
our hearts. Many of us would commit a score 
of sins, rather than lose an eye or a hand. But to 
the mind of Jesus no loss which may come to the 
body is to be compared with the loss which comes 
to the soul by breaking the law of God. "Joy," 
he said, " shall be in heaven over one sinner that 
repenteth." This feeling of Jesus was communi- 
cated to his disciples. His apostles go to work 
with unflagging earnestness to root out the sins of 
men. Whenever Paul writes of sin, his language 
becomes terribly earnest and intense. Sin to him 
is no shadow, it is an awful reality. He speaks to 
his converts in words which sound like the blast 
of a bugle. " Put on the whole armor of God that 
you may be able to stand against the wiles of the 
devil." 

It is at this point that the world comes into con- 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 237 

flict with the teaching of the church. The world 
thinks that the church makes much ado about little. 
Men of the world cannot see that sin is terrible, 
or that it needs to be shunned or feared. Men 
sometimes confess that they are sinners in a jocose 
tone; they confess their sinfulness between loud 
bursts of laughter. One would think from their 
behavior that sinning is a joke. Every generation 
has brought forth its host of writers who have 
endeavored to persuade the world that sin is noth- 
ing but a trifle, a kind of straw that some happy 
wind will some day blow away. Or they make it 
out a form of immaturity, an imperfection, a cru- 
dity, a greenness, a rawness, a pardonable igno- 
rance which will certainly be outgrown. You do 
not blame the apple tree in the early spring be- 
cause the blossoms are not full blown. Give 
the tree sufficient time, and the apples will be 
forthcoming. It sounds quite plausible, but is it 
true ? 

According to the teaching of some, sin is a ne- 
cessity. Sin is a part of human nature, a part 
of human life, an integral element in the ongoing 
process of an unfolding world. God is the creator 
of sin, and men do wrong by a divine thrusting 
on. To all such teaching the church shouts, 
" No ! " To all of the speculations of philosophy 
she says, in the words of the Master, that sin is 
real and terrible and heinous, the one thing to be 
feared and shunned by every son of man. And 



238 SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

the Christian church takes this position not be- 
cause she desires to frighten men, or because she 
takes delight in dealing with dark and dismal 
things ; but she must take it in order to be true 
to all the facts of human experience. Certainly 
sin is not a trifle. How can any man call it a 
trifle with the centuries unrolled before him. Oh, 
the long-drawn tragedy of the ages ! Oh, the moun- 
tainous masses of woe and wretchedness and guilt ! 
Every generation living its life amid groanings, 
every century dripping with blood ! Certainly a 
thing which can cause such havoc, such devasta- 
tion, such widespread and unspeakable ruin, is not 
to be considered a trifle. 

Nor is there any reason for thinking that sin is 
only a form of ignorance or imperfection which will 
be outgrown by the lapse of time. Many men do 
not outgrow it, but they grow worse and worse and 
worse, becoming more and more brutalized and de- 
monized, until they lie down and die as the beast 
dieth. And certainly we cannot roll the responsi- 
bility for the woe and the wreck of the ages on God. 
How does it happen that the springs are all polluted 
— the springs of home life, of commercial life, of 
political life ? They are all poisoned. Surely an 
enemy hath done this, not the good God. The sane- 
headed Shakespeare declared that it was the fop- 
pery of the world to say that men are sinners by 
heavenly compulsion. Christianity thinks too much 
of man to allow it to be said that sin is a necessity. 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 239 

If it be a necessity, then he is nothing but a pup- 
pet, a tool, a puny weakling not responsible for his 
doings, not capable of meriting either penalty or 
reward. Christianity knows no such doctrine as 
that, but she says boldly : "Man is free ; man is 
responsible ; man is created in God's image ; he can 
create a heaven, he can create a hell. He will 
stand some day before God's judgment bar and 
receive the deeds done in the body." And because 
man is so great, wrong-doing takes on a terrible 
significance. Sin is a disease, an awful disease ; 
a debt, an immeasurable debt ; a load, a crushing 
load ; a slavery, a galling, intolerable slavery — and 
the question is how can the world get rid of it ? 
Canst thou, O Christianity, minister to a soul 
diseased? And Christianity says, "Yes." 

For a great problem Christianity suggests a 
great remedy. Here it is, " God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him might not perish." 
The death of Jesus is the central fact of the New 
Testament. All the evangelists give more space 
to it than to any other event they narrate. Not 
one of the other writers of the New Testament 
can ever get away from it. Jesus came into the 
world to save men from their sins. He knew that 
to save them he must die. From the very begin- 
ning his death was in his mind. That he was 
thinking about it often comes out in his talk. 
Nicodemus goes to see him, and in the conver- 



240 SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

sation Jesus says, " The Son of man must be 
lifted up." Nicodemus did not understand what 
he meant, nor did the crowd understand later on 
what was meant by the words, " But I, if I be 
lifted up, will draw all men unto me." To the 
crowd in one of the temple courts he says, 
" Destroy this temple, and in three days I will 
raise it up." No one caught his meaning. To 
the disciples of John the Baptist, who complained 
because his disciples did not fast, he says, "The 
days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken 
away from them and then will they fast." They 
understood not what he said. To the crowd in 
Capernaum he says, "The bread which I shall 
give you is my flesh," and they knew not what he 
said. To the crowd in the streets of Jerusalem 
he says : " The good shepherd lays down his life 
for the sheep. I am the good shepherd." But 
they missed the meaning of his words. It was 
not until Peter had made the great confession at 
Caesarea Philippi that Jesus begins to talk to his 
disciples plainly about his death. As soon as 
he finds men who are convinced that he is the 
Messiah, he begins to tell them that the Messiah 
must suffer. On their way southward from 
Caesarea Philippi the evangelists tell us that Jesus 
while passing through Galilee took his disciples 
apart, and in a solemn manner told them for the 
second time that he was going to Jerusalem to die. 
A little later, while they were passing through 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 24 1 

Perea, he told them the same thing again. When 
his disciples began to dispute as to who should be 
the greatest, he said, " The Son of man is come 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give his life a ransom for many." When James 
and John wanted high places in the kingdom, he 
spoke to them of his baptism and his cup. When 
he arrived at Bethany, Mary and Martha give him 
a dinner. Mary breaks an alabaster box of oint- 
ment on his feet. Jesus says that that woman's 
action will be spoken of wherever the gospel shall 
be preached because she has prepared him for his 
burial. On the last Tuesday of his earthly life 
word was brought that a company of Greeks 
wanted to have a conversation with him, and the 
announcement threw him into a meditative mood. 
He muses thus : " Except a corn of wheat fall 
into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it 
die ..." The last night arrives, and he meets 
his disciples in the upper chamber. At the close 
of the supper he takes a cup of wine and passes 
it from one to another, saying, "This cup is the 
new covenant in my blood, which is shed for many 
unto the remission of sins : do this in remembrance 
of me." Not only has his death been uppermost 
in Jesus' mind, but he wants it to be uppermost in 
the mind of the church forever. 

When we pass into the epistles we are never 
permitted to get out of sight of the cross. It is 
the cross that dominates all. Paul writes to the 



242 SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

Corinthians : " I have determined to know nothing 
among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." 
" I delivered unto you first of all that which I also 
received, how that Christ died for our sins accord- 
ing to the scriptures." " Ye are bought with a 
price, therefore ..." In his letter to the Romans 
he declares that he is able to glory in tribulations, 
for "when we were yet without strength Christ died 
for the ungodly." "God commendeth his love 
toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ 
died for us." The gospel of Paul is also the gospel 
of Peter, " Who his own self bare our sins in his 
body on the tree." Christ died for our sins that 
he might bring us to God. The gospel of Peter is 
also the gospel of John. " Herein is love, not that 
we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his 
Son to be the propitiation for our sins." " The 
blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all 
sin." "He is the propitiation for the sins of the 
whole world." John in writing the book of the 
Revelation pauses in the midst of this narrative 
to sing, and this is his song, " Unto him that 
loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood, 
to him be the glory and the dominion forever and 
ever." The exile on Patmos had a glorious vision, 
and it was this, " I saw a Lamb as it had been 
slain." When you hear the one supreme voice 
of the New Testament clearly, you hear it saying, 
"Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the 
sin of the world." 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 243 

" There is a green hill far away, 

Without a city wall, 
Where the dear Lord was crucified, 

Who died to save us all. 
We may not know, we cannot tell, 

What pains he had to bear ; 
But we believe it was for us 

He hung and suffered there. 

"He died that we might be forgiven, 

He died to make us good, 
That we might go at last to heaven, 

Saved by his precious blood. 
There was no other good enough 

To pay the price of sin ; 
He only could unlock the gate 

Of heaven, and let us in." 

Let us now go up into the highest pinnacle of 
the mountain of revelation and see what all this 
means. We are going to see things now which 
would never have entered into the heart of man 
had they not been revealed to him by God. Jesus 
Christ, the only begotten Son of the Eternal God, 
dies upon a cross to save men from their sins. 
What does that mean ? Do you believe that God 
thinks ? We all believe he does. We are in the 
habit of saying the universe is the expression of 
his thought, and reverent scientists take delight 
in saying that they think God's thoughts after 
him. But does he feel ? It is easier to believe 
that God thinks than it is to believe that he feels. 
We feel ; we have emotions. We are sensitive. 
We respond to sights and cries of woe. Does 



yw4 



244 SIJV i AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

God feel ? If we are created in his image, and 
if Jesus Christ is his Son, of course God feels. 
But does he feel sorrow? In other words, can 
he sympathize ? Can he feel with us ? Can he 
enter into the tragedy of our life and make our 
tragedy his own ? 

As for ourselves, we can sympathize. We can 
enter into the woes of others. We can feel with 
those in distress, and feeling with them is sorrow. 
Now if we are created in the image of God, and 
if Christ is God's Son, then of course God can feel 
sorrow. But is God capable of suffering ? Can 
the Almighty God suffer ? At this point we pause 
and shrink and draw back. We rebel against the 
thought of a suffering God. Our experience is 
similar to that of Simon Peter. When Christ 
told him he was going to Jerusalem to suffer, 
Peter would not hear him. He said, "Far be it 
from thee, Lord." And Jesus replied in sub- 
stance, "Peter, you understand men, but you do 
not understand God." We have the same shrink- 
ing when we are asked to believe that God 
suffers. It is easier to think of him as a great, 
silent, emotionless sphinx, a vast unexplored ocean 
of serenity. 

Shall God suffer? Far be it from thee, O Father, 
who art in heaven ! But we can suffer. We ago- 
nize and bleed. And if we are made in the image 
of God, and if God is in Christ reconciling the 
world to himself, then why should it be thought 



\ 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 245 

a thing incredible that ours is a suffering God ? 
We do not shrink from saying that Jesus is a man 
of sorrows. If Jesus speaks truly when he says, 
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," 
then why should we hesitate to think of a God of 
sorrows ? We are often told that Jesus is like God. 
It is just as true to say that God is like Jesus. 

Is God capable of making sacrifices ? Can he 
do anything that will cost him the blood of his 
heart ? We human beings are capable of sacri- 
ficing ourselves for those we love. The mother 
sacrifices herself for her child, the friend for his 
friend, the patriot for his country — is it possible 
for Almighty God to make any sacrifice ? If we 
are created in his image, and if Jesus Christ is 
his only Son, we must go on and say that it is 
possible for the Heavenly Father to make sacri- 
fices. 

What sacrifice can God make ? We know the 
greatest sacrifice which an earthly father can 
make : he can surrender up his son. Can God 
make a sacrifice like that ? Has he a Son ? Not 
a son in the sense in which a finite creature of 
this earth can be a son, but a Son who is eternal 
as himself, who shares with him the government 
of the universe and enters into all his thoughts 
and plans, and whose fellowship is satisfying to 
God's infinite heart. Has he such a Son as 
that ? Christianity says he has. There is an 
Eternal Son. The filial and paternal fellowships 



246 SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

existing here on earth are but shadows of things 
eternal in the heavens. We are created in God's 
image ; and if our life is incomplete without fellow- 
ship, so also is the life of God. Will the Eternal 
Father send this Son to earth ? Can this Son 
enter into human limitations, and think through 
a human brain, and feel through a human heart, 
and do life's work through the organs of a human 
body ? Christianity says he can. Because man 
is created in God's image, it is possible for the 
godhead to dwell in human flesh. 

Will God, then, send his Son ? Christianity 
says he will. He has sent him. He sent men 
to the world, — prophets, heroes, saints, — but 
they were all rejected. Some were stoned, some 
were sawn asunder, some were slain with the 
sword, afflicted, tormented. At last God said, I 
will send my Son ; they will reverence him. But 
representatives of our humanity seized him and 
nailed him to a cross. Instead of reverencing 
him, they mocked him. The elders, the old men 
of Palestine, — wise in counsel and discreet in 
government, the leaders in Church and State, — 
they stood before the cross and mocked their dy- 
ing prisoner, saying : " Save yourself ! Save your- 
self!" And with them stood the Chief Priests, 
the men whose business it was to offer up sacri- 
fices to God — they also mocked him, saying: 
" Save yourself ! Save yourself ! " And with them 
stood the Scribes, the men appointed to teach the 



\ / 



SIN, AND ITS FORGIVENESS 247 

meaning of God's law — and they also mocked him, 
saying: "Save yourself! Save yourself!" And 
around them stood the people who had come up to 
Jerusalem to say their prayers. They also mocked 
him, saying : " Save yourself ! Save yourself ! " 
And even the poor brutal soldiers who played 
their games at the foot of the cross looked up 
from their games long enough to mock him, say- 
ing : "Save yourself! Save yourself!" And the 
robbers, one on each side, they also mocked 
him, saying : " Save yourself ! Save yourself ! " 
But Christ could not save himself. When has 
love ever been able to save itself ? Love suffers 
long and is kind. Love prayed that these men 
might be forgiven. And ever since that glorious 
death on Golgotha, the human heart has grown 
tender at the memory of it, and sin has grown 
increasingly hideous, and men and women by the 
millions have been singing : — 

a Just as I am, thy love unknown 
Hath broken every barrier down ; 
Now to be thine, yea, thine alone, 
O Lamb of God, I come ! " 

We are high up on the mountain, the mountain 
of God. If all that I have been saying is true, then 
divine love is richer than many of us have im- 
agined. Sorrow is part of the life of God. The 
Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. 
There has been a shadow on God's face ever since 



248 SIN", AND ITS FORGIVENESS 

the first man did wrong. There has been a wound 
in his heart ever since the first man hated his 
brother man. All the cries and groans and ago- 
nies and desolations of the burdened and sorrow- 
ing centuries have been a burden on a heart that 
is infinite in its tenderness and compassion. 
From the beginning he has carried the bleeding, 
burdened world on his heart, and because he car- 
ries it sin will some day die, and love shall reign 
supreme. " O the depth of the riches both of the 
wisdom and the knowledge of God ! How un- 
searchable are his judgments, and his ways past 
finding out ! For of him, and through him, and 
unto him, are all things : to whom be the glory 
forever. Amen." 



X 

SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 



X 

SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

" Behold then the goodness and severity of God." 

— Romans xi : 22. 

There is probably no feature of the Christian 
religion so generally misunderstood and so fre- 
quently caricatured as the teaching of the New 
Testament concerning the punishment of sin. 
There is a deal of confusion in the public mind at 
many points in the Christian creed, but at no other 
point is the ignorance so dense and the confusion 
so distressing as at the paragraph which deals with 
retribution. Many persons, apparently, know little 
more of the Christian religion than that it teaches 
future punishment. Men sometimes say that they 
do not care to go to church because they do not 
want to hear a man talk about hell. Such men, it 
would seem, have the idea that hell is the staple of 
the preacher's argument. Others have a fashion 
of speaking disrespectfully of all Christians, and 
the arraignment which they bring against them is 
that whereas Christians have hell in their creed, 
they give it no place in their actual belief. Chris- 
tians therefore are largely hypocrites, people who 
say one thing and believe another. 

25 1 



252 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

Now it must be confessed that for this wide- 
spread confusion the church is in part to blame. 
Christian teachers have often gone beyond the 
letter of what is written in talking about this 
matter, and very frequently the doctrine of retri- 
bution has been presented in a form abhorrent to 
the reason of thoughtful men. Long before Jesus 
came, men had been thinking about the other 
world, and philosophers and poets had speculated 
concerning the doom of the wicked. The imagina- 
tion had painted most fearful pictures of the tor- 
ments and distresses of the souls of evil men, 
doomed to linger in the horrid gloom of Tartarus. 

And it was inevitable that something of pagan 
thought and feeling should find its way into the 
Christian church, for the Christian church has 
always been modified it its life and in its thought 
by the world in which it stands, and the thought of 
Christian preachers is always more or less colored 
by the atmosphere of their age. The Christian 
church made its first converts from paganism, and 
a pagan on becoming a Christian did not leave 
behind him all the impressions of early educa- 
tion. Every man, it has been said, carries his cra- 
dle with him. No matter what we may become, 
we can never escape entirely from the thing which 
we have been. Men and women who had been 
brought up in the atmosphere of the pagan world 
naturally read into the words of Jesus the thoughts 
and feelings with which they had been familiar 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 2 S3 

since the days of childhood. Moreover, the 
Christian church went out to meet and conquer a 
desperately wicked world. Men were so brazen 
in their sinfulness, and so audacious and cruel in 
their opposition, that it is hardly to be wondered 
at that Christian preachers gave an exaggerated 
emphasis to the dark sayings of the New Testa- 
ment, in order to make an impression upon the 
flinty hearts of the masses who were rushing to 
destruction. 

Because, then, of the influences of pagan thought, 
and the widespread corruption of the pagan world, 
the leaders of the Christian church fell into the 
habit of giving a place to the doctrine of penalty 
out of proportion to the place which it holds in the 
gospels. The mediaeval church from first to last was 
morbid and unchristian in its teaching concerning 
retribution. The supreme poet of the mediaeval 
church is Dante, and Dante owes his reputation to 
the fact that he wrote about hell. Although him- 
self a Christian poet, he borrowed his imagery 
largely from the pagan world, and many of his ideas 
were suggested not by Christ and the apostles, but 
by men who had lived and written before Jesus 
came. Three hundred years later Protestantism pro- 
duced a mighty poet, John Milton, who also wrote 
of hell. He borrowed his imagery largely from 
Dante and from Virgil, and although he sometimes 
used biblical expressions, he dyed them all in the vat 
of pagan thought. Dante and Milton have probably 



254 S/Ar , AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

done more to shape the popular conception of 
punishment on the other side of the grave than all 
the preachers who have preached within the last 
three hundred years. 

Oh, the marvellous fascination of pictures ! How 
they attract us, and how they hold us with a grip 
that cannot be broken. It is impossible to forget a 
picture which the imagination has once seen. But 
we cannot put all the blame upon the poets ; the 
preachers must come in for their full share of cen- 
sure. Coarse and reckless men in the pulpit, gifted 
with a fatal facility in the use of words, have some- 
times painted the woes of sinners in language which 
has driven the human heart to cry out, " Has God, 
then, no mercy?" And men of high intelligence 
and genuine refinement like Jonathan Edwards in 
the eighteenth century, and Charles Spurgeon in 
the nineteenth, have preached occasional sermons 
which, although delivered from Christian pulpits, 
have been in reality a travesty of the gospel and a 
libel on God. When so many misleading state- 
ments have been made in Christian pulpits, it be- 
comes necessary for us to find out for ourselves 
what really is the teaching of Christianity in regard 
to this whole matter. 

Let us go to work, then, this morning with the 
Bible. Let us shake off, if possible, the influences 
of Dante and of Milton, and keep within the limits 
of Holy Writ. For our present purpose we may 
drop out entirely the Old Testament, for there is 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 2$$ 

nothing concerning punishment in the Old Testa- 
ment which is not said more clearly and more ter- 
ribly in the New. And, moreover, there is not a 
single picture in the Old Testament of anything 
that is going to happen on the other side of death. 

Whatever Christianity has to teach concerning 
retribution, is found in the New Testament. Nor 
need we pay special attention to any part of the 
New Testament except the gospels. The subject 
of retribution is not ignored by the writers outside 
the gospels, but they add nothing to the doctrine 
which is taught by our Lord himself. Coming, 
then, to the gospels with unbiassed mind, what 
impression do they make upon us in their treat- 
ment of penalty ? Will you not agree with me in 
saying that the idea of retribution is held steadily 
in the background ? The gospel, as Jesus preached 
it, was a message of good news. It is not good 
news that some men must be punished. Its su- 
preme purpose is to persuade men to believe that 
God is Father and that every man is his child. 
The angel that announced the birth of Jesus whis- 
pered sweetly, " Do not be afraid." That is the 
first word of Christianity always. If you put any 
other word first, you have departed from the method 
of the New Testament. 

Christianity approaches with words of sweetness 
and light. Nevertheless, the dark side of life is not 
ignored. God's goodness stands in the foreground ; 
but God's severity is not forgotten. The Sermon 



256 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

on the Mount may stand this morning as a good 
illustration of what the New Testament is from first 
to last. The Sermon on the Mount is a mountain 
range. As you look upon it, what is it that you 
see first ? When you turn away from it, what do 
you remember longest ? The sermon begins with 
" Blessed," eight times repeated. That is the first 
peak, and it is bathed in sunshine. It is a peak of 
blessing. Another peak is the Golden Rule ; the 
Lord's Prayer is another peak. "Be not anxious 
for your life. Ye are of more value than many 
sparrows." That is still another peak. These are 
the prominent features of the Sermon on the 
Mount, and these are the things which God wants 
us, first of all, to lay to heart ; nevertheless, these 
are not all of the Sermon on the Mount. There 
are deep and dark ravines in the sides of it. In one 
of the ravines we hear these words, " If your right 
hand offend you, cut it off ; if your right eye offend 
you, pluck it out." In another ravine we hear : 
" Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that 
leads unto life. Wide is the gate and broad is the 
way that leads unto destruction." In another ravine 
we hear the Master speak of a man who may be 
likened unto a man who builds his house upon the 
sand. When the storm strikes it the house falls. 

There is an abundance of sunshine in the New 
Testament ; but near every sunbeam there is a 
shadow. When Jesus began his ministry in Naza- 
reth, he quoted a passage from Isaiah to indicate 



SIN", AND ITS PUNISHMENT 2 $7 

the spirit and the scope of his work. His quotation 
is remarkable in this, that he does not quote Isaiah 
to the end of his sentence. Isaiah says, "To pro- 
claim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day 
of vengeance of our God." Jesus quotes the first 
words and omits the last. It is not a part of his 
mission, then, to proclaim " the day of vengeance 
of our God." And so wherever he went he said to 
men, "The Son of man is not come to condemn 
the world, but to save the world." He came to 
be the Saviour and not the Judge. In talking to 
his disciples he seldom spoke of punishment. His 
severe and awful words were drawn from him 
by the reckless actions of wicked men. His great 
parables of judgment were all spoken within a week 
of the end of his life. It was only after the nation 
had rejected him that he told men plainly of their 
awful doom. 

This, then, is the method of Christianity. It 
speaks of joy and gladness, of light and music, of 
love and glory. It is not until men have turned 
their backs upon all these that it utters the dark 
word, "Woe ! " When a little girl is trying her very 
best to be good, the mother never speaks to her of 
punishment. Why should a little maiden trying to 
be good be tormented with any thought of penalty ? 
It is only when the girl becomes thoughtless or 
wayward or rebellious that the mother ventures to 
hint of the possible consequences of transgression. 
Christian mothers follow instinctively the method 



258 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

of the New Testament, and Christian preachers in 
our day are doing the same. 

It is sometimes asserted that preachers do not 
preach retribution any longer ; that the heinousness 
of sin has been lost sight of ; that the severity of 
God is a superstition long outgrown. The answer to 
all this is that ministers to-day do not give the place 
to retribution which was given by the preachers of 
a hundred years ago, because the preachers of a 
hundred years ago departed from the method of the 
New Testament. Retribution is still taught, and 
that, too, with earnestness and plainness in every 
genuinely Christian pulpit ; but it is taught now with 
the proportion and balance of the New Testament, 
and not with the exaggerated emphasis which disfig- 
ured the preaching of a preceding generation. The 
majority of men and women who meet together on 
the Lord's Day to hear a Christian minister preach 
are men and women who are trying to be good. 
They try with different degrees of earnestness and 
with varying degrees of success. The very fact, 
however, that they are in a Christian church is 
presumptive evidence that they want to be better 
than they are. 

The supreme business, then, of a Christian 
preacher is to give encouragement and cheer, to 
light up the shadows of daily experience by exposi- 
tions of the upper glories, to give instruction in the 
ways of righteousness that it may be easier to be 
good. But while this is the substance of a minister's 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 259 

preaching, the idea of retribution is always in the 
background. A true preacher always moves on the 
assumption that he is dealing with matters of life 
and death, that sin is a heinous thing, and that it 
makes avast difference whether men choose the evil 
or the good. In every congregation there are those 
who are careless. Some are reckless, some are grow- 
ing worse. There are young men who are dallying 
with temptation, toying with sin, playing with fire. 
There are hardened Agrippas who need to be told of 
judgment to come. And so on occasional Sundays 
the minister will turn aside from pleasant themes 
and call attention to the darkness of the road that 
leads to death. 

It is sometimes said that ministers no longer 
preach hell. This is said in a tone which condemns. 
The natural inference is that preachers are ashamed 
of the New Testament and Jesus of Nazareth, and 
are leaving out an important part of what he com- 
manded his disciples to preach. Do the preachers 
of to day leave out hell ? What do you mean ? If 
you mean the word " hell," then they certainly leave 
hell out. If you mean the truth for which that word 
"hell" stands, then it can confidently be asserted 
that no true preacher leaves it out. Why has the 
word " hell " been banished from the pulpit ? Be- 
cause men are ashamed of it ? No. It has been 
banished because it has changed its meaning. Our 
King James's version says : " Take no thought for 
your life. Take no thought for the morrow." It 



260 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

is almost wicked to read such sentences to a con- 
gregation in our day. They misrepresent the Lord's 
meaning. He never said, "Take no thought for your 
life;" his word was, " Be not anxious for your life." 
The word " damnation " has changed its meaning. 
It ought to be eliminated from the New Testament 
because it misleads. When you and I hear the 
word "hell," we give it the Miltonic meaning, not 
the meaning which it had when Jesus spoke the word 
" Gehenna." We might say that Paul dropped the 
word " hell." It does not occur in any of his letters. 
Gehenna was a Hebrew word. It meant a definite 
thing to the ears of Hebrews. Paul preached to the 
Gentile world, and he never used the word a single 
time, and yet he believed and taught retribution. 
It is not necessary for preachers nowadays to use 
the word "hell." It has been so spoiled by bad 
usage it ought to be banished from the Bible and 
the pulpit. Let us now see what the New Testa- 
ment doctrine of retribution is. 

Sin is punished. Every sin is punished. Every 
sin is punished inevitably. We live in a moral 
universe; everything about it is moral from top 
to bottom. When the New Testament speaks of 
penalty, there are no wavering intonations, no inter- 
rogation points. Lines are drawn straight. The 
wayfaring man, though a fool, is not allowed to be 
deceived at this point. There are two gates, one 
narrow and one wide. There are two roads, 
one narrow and one broad. There are two goals, 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 26 1 

one is life and the other is destruction. There are 
two directions, one leads to eternal punishment, the 
other to life eternal. The morality of the universe 
is expressed in the great sentence, " God so loved 
the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have eternal life." 

Sin is punished naturally, not mechanically, not 
arbitrarily. All is in accordance with law. What- 
soever a man sows, that shall he also reap. If he 
sows to the flesh, he reaps corruption. If he sows 
to the spirit, he reaps life eternal. The processes 
which go on in the wheat field are no more natural 
and inevitable than are the processes which go on in 
the life and decay of souls. Sins grow as virtues do : 
first the blade and then the ear, and then the full 
corn in the ear. Sin when it is finished bringeth 
forth death. If a fruit tree does not bring forth good 
fruit, it is cut down and gotten out of the way. At 
harvest time the tares are separated from the wheat 
and burned. When a fisherman brings to land a 
net full of fishes, he throws away those that are 
good for nothing. The New Testament says that 
the same common sense which is exercised by men 
in their ordinary occupations will be made manifest 
in the government of the world. The punishment 
of sin is sensible and natural. 

Sin is punished fairly, impartially, equitably. 
Christianity knows nothing of a great pit into 
which all sinners are swept indiscriminately. The 



262 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

justice of God is perfect. The punishments of 
earth are all vitiated by human infirmity. Parental 
discipline is often partial, unreasonable. A child 
is punished too severely for some misdemeanors, 
not severely enough for others. Our legal system 
is like a great net full of holes — many guilty men 
escape. It is impossible in any court of justice 
to give every man his exact deserts. But in the 
divine government there is no such thing as blun- 
dering. The punishment is so just that it becomes 
beautiful. There is no such thing as shamming. 
We cannot palm off professions before God. Many 
shall say to him, " Lord, Lord, but ..." There is 
no such thing as making excuses to God. We may 
say, "When saw I thee an hungered?" and the 
answer will be, "You saw very clearly what you 
ought to have done." 

All sins are not equally heinous. All bad tempers 
are not nourished to the same degree, consequently 
penalties are graded. Jesus brought out this fact 
again and again. He declared it would be more tol- 
erable in the day of judgment for some cities than 
for others. He said that some servants would be 
beaten with many stripes, other servants with only 
a few. In the Sermon on the Mount he says that a 
man guilty of a certain sin will be in danger of the 
judgment ; a man guilty of a more serious one will 
be in danger of the council ; a man guilty of a still 
greater sin will be in danger of Gehenna fire. 
That is the Hebrew way of putting things. The 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 263 

local court had a right to cut a man's head off ; the 
Sanhedrin had the power to stone a man to death, 
and if the criminal was of the worst type, the council 
could order his body thrown into the deep ravine 
south of the city along with the carcasses of animals 
and the corpses of criminals. This Hebrew speech 
of Jesus translated into the dialect of to-day would 
run as follows : Some sins will bring you to the jail, 
other sins will bring you to the penitentiary, other 
sins will bring you to the electric chair. 

The New Testament never wearies insisting on 
the fact that every man is dealt with according to his 
deserts. We are to receive the things done in the 
body. We are to be judged according to what we 
have done. Every man is to be rewarded or con- 
demned according to his deeds. Moreover, all 
extenuating circumstances are to be taken into 
account. Talents differ. God does not forget 
this. One man has five talents, another two, an- 
other one. That will not be forgotten in making 
up the account. Opportunities differ. Some men 
are called at the third hour, some at the sixth, and 
some at the ninth. That is not forgotten at the end 
of the day. Industry differs in different men. Some 
men will increase their one pound to ten, others 
will increase their one pound to five ; other men 
will not increase their pound at all. All this is 
taken into account, and a thousand other things 
which we have never thought of will enter into the 
divine judgment. Penalty is inflicted with an even 



264 SIN y AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

hand. Divine justice is so just it becomes glorious. 
No sinner will ever say he was punished beyond 
his deserts. 

The consequences of sin are terrible; they are 
fearful beyond expression ; they are awful beyond 
the reach of thought. There is only one frightful 
thing in the universe, and that is sin. It is worth 
while for a man to keep clear of it at all hazards 
and at all costs. Any suffering which a man can 
inflict on another is nothing compared with the 
suffering that sin brings. The loss of any part of 
the body is insignificant compared with the loss 
which sin brings to the soul. If your right eye 
causes you to sin, get rid of it. In order to make 
this clear, Jesus used all the dark symbols which 
the language of his day afforded. It has often 
been noted that the most direful things said in 
the New Testament are said by our Lord himself. 
God has laid upon him the unpopularity of this 
whole doctrine. Peter and John and Paul have 
very little to say about punishment. It looks as 
though God would not trust any one else except 
his Son to talk about things so momentous. He 
knew that a dark word from Jesus' gracious lips 
would weigh more than one dropped from the lips 
of any prophet or apostle. Here are some of the 
symbols which Jesus used: "Weeping," — tears 
have in every land and time been the symbol of 
grief. "Gnashing of teeth," — the Orientals give 
vent to their emotions more freely than do we. In 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 265 

passions of remorse or chagrin or disgust they gnash 
their teeth. Jesus picked up the expression and 
used it as a symbol. "Outer darkness," — dark- 
ness has no terror for us. There is no darkness. 
We live in an electric light age, we have banished 
the night. Jesus was speaking to Jews, they were 
afraid of the dark. The outer darkness struck 
terror to their hearts. He used the words as a 
symbol. Down in the ravine of Gehenna the 
carcasses of animals were devoured by worms. He 
used the worm as a symbol. The worst punishment 
known to the pagan world was being sawn asunder. 
Jesus used the punishment as a symbol. He spoke 
of destruction, of perishing, of eternal punishment. 
Certainly language can go no farther. That God 
is severe in his punishment of sin, the New Testa- 
ment does not allow any man to doubt. 

The penalty of sin does not exhaust itself this 
side the grave. What we are in this world we are 
going to be in the next. He that is righteous here 
will be righteous there. He that is filthy here will 
be filthy there. There is no alchemy in the experi- 
ence which we call death to change the temper of 
the soul. Memory goes with us, and memory to a 
transgressor of God's law is a tormenting flame. 

The penalties of sin become more grievous on 
the other side of death than here. Tares and 
wheat are allowed to grow together here, they 
will be separated there. Fishes, good and bad, are 
allowed to stay in the net together until the net is 



266 S/J\T, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

brought to shore. There will be a separation when 
we reach that other land, and with the separation 
must of necessity come chagrin, suffering, shame, 
woe unspeakable. Moreover, sins like seeds bring 
forth their harvests at different periods. Some seeds 
sprout quickly, grow to maturity early. The harvest 
is in the barn before the season is over. Other 
seeds sprout slowly. Months must elapse before 
the farmer can see what his harvest is going to be. 
So it is with sins. As Paul puts it, some men's sins 
are evident, going before to judgment, other men 
they follow after. Drunkenness and lust are sins 
of the flesh, they grow rapidly. The harvest comes 
speedily. These sins when carried to excess bring 
torments of the body which cannot be described. 
These sins are evident, going before to judgment. 
But there are other sins, such as vanity, frivolity, 
envy, greed, hate, cruelty, inhumanity, dishonesty, 
meanness, irreverence ; these sins also are heinous, 
but the full harvest is not reached in this world. It 
is only in the spirit world that it is possible to know 
what these sins really are. This is the teaching 
of the parable of Dives and Lazarus. Dives was a 
wicked man, and he had a part of his punishment in 
this world, but not all. He had a hard heart, and 
that truly is a punishment most terrible. To have 
a heart that cannot feel, that is retribution. But 
Dives's retribution was still greater on the other side 
of death. Death like a fire burnt up his fine linen 
and his banquet table. Death burnt up the rags 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 267 

of Lazarus and also his sores. In the next world 
there was no linen, no banquet, no rags, no sores, 
only two men, and one of the two was in torment. 
While in this world that man had been inhuman, 
and inhumanity brings its complete penalties only 
after death. 

Up to this point everything is clear. Thus far 
the teaching of Christianity is unmistakable, indis- 
putable. Thus far it is certainly reasonable, worthy 
of the mind and the heart of God. Up to this 
point the church universal is agreed. All divisions 
and branches of Christendom — Catholics, Protes- 
tants, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congre- 
gationalists, Methodists, Unitarians, Universalists, 
Swedenborgians — agree that these six propositions 
can be supported by New Testament teaching. As 
soon as we pass beyond these, however, we enter the 
realm of speculation, and Christian scholars begin 
to differ. The human mind is alert and marvellously 
curious, and the heart has obstinate questionings 
which will not be silenced. The New Testament 
is too reserved. Jesus is too reticent. Our soul 
cries out for completer knowledge. 

It is in trying to answer these questions to which 
the New Testament gives no clear and unmistakable 
answer that Christians have gotten into age-long 
disputes and have befogged not only themselves but 
others. Christianity has been so completely cov- 
ered over with the speculations of men in regard to 
matters with which Jesus of Nazareth did not care 



268 S/JV, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

to deal that many a man has not been able to see 
j ust what Christianity really teaches. For instance : 
Who will be saved ? What men will enter heaven ? 
What is the condition of Socrates, Plato, and Aris- 
totle, and the great and good men who lived before 
Jesus came ? What will be God's dealings with the 
men in pagan lands to whose ears the name of Jesus 
never came ? Christianity does not allow us to make 
out any list either of the saved or the lost. We can- 
not say certainly of any man that he is sure to go to 
heaven, nor can we say of any man that he can never 
enter eternal blessedness. The New Testament 
dissuades us from all such speculation. "Judge 
not," it says, "that ye be not judged." 

What shall be the nature of the blessedness of 
the blessed, and what shall be the nature of the 
suffering of the wicked? The New Testament 
gives no answer. We know nothing of the spirit- 
ual body and nothing of its spiritual environment. 
How then can we say what are the possibilities of 
either joy or woe in the world which we call eternal ? 

How many will come back to the Father's house, 
and how many will not return ? The New Testa- 
ment has no answer. When you hear it said that 
Christianity teaches that the majority of the hu- 
man race will be lost, you may say that Christianity 
teaches nothing of the sort. Fortunately for us an 
inquisitive man once said to Jesus, "Are there few 
that be saved ? " and the quick reply was, " Strive 
to enter in at the strait gate." Whenever we begin 



SIN", AND ITS PUNISHMENT 269 

to figure about the other world, we are wasting 
time which ought to be used in more profitable 
ways. 

How long will penalty endure ? What will be 
the end of sinners ? That is one of the most in- 
teresting of all questions which the soul can ask. 
It has tormented, probably, more Christians than 
almost any other. To this question four answers 
have been given, all of them by great scholars, 
noble saints whose loyalty to the Lord cannot be 
questioned. The very fact that four different an- 
swers can be given by earnest, consecrated Chris- 
tian men with the New Testament before them is 
conclusive proof, to my mind, that it is not within 
the scope of the New Testament revelation to 
give us a clear and final answer to this question. 
The duration of penalty is not a matter of revela- 
tion then, but a subject for speculation. 

Almost from the beginning of the Christian 
church able Bible students have believed and taught 
that all souls will some day return to the Father's 
house, that no matter how widely they may have 
gone astray, or how deep they may have fallen into 
sin, they will at last, having paid the full penalty 
of their transgression, come back to the Father's 
house and enter into the blessedness which he has 
prepared for those who love him. And this belief 
is not without support, both in Scripture and in 
reason. When Jesus said, "And I, if I be lifted 
up, will draw all men unto me," did he mean all, 



2/0 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

or only some ? And when Paul in writing to the 
Philippians said that God had given Jesus a name 
which is above every name, that at the name of 
Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven 
and things on earth, and things under the earth, 
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord, are we to take his words literally, 
or are we to say that some knees will never bow 
and some tongues will never confess ? 

Paul is wonderfully free in his use of the word 
"all," and it is to his letters that the restoration- 
ists have always gone for consolation. Such ex- 
pressions as, " So in Christ shall all be made 
alive " and " That God may be all in all," are scat- 
tered plentifully through his letters ; and if his lan- 
guage is to be taken literally, there is a doctrine 
of universalism which cannot easily be overturned. 
But the strongest argument of the restorationists 
is not Scripture, but an inference from the revealed 
character of God. They say if God is love, and 
if God is omnipotent, then every finite will must 
sooner or later surrender, for it is unthinkable that 
infinite love should ever be defeated. 

In answer to all this it can be said that in none 
of the passages in which the word "all" is used, 
either by Jesus or his apostles, is the idea of the 
duration of punishment under discussion. It is 
always hazardous to draw inferences concerning a 
thing from language which is spoken concerning 
something altogether different. And as for the 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 27 1 

argument from the nature of God, it can be said 
in reply that we do not know what is the power of 
resistance in the human will, nor do we know how 
fatal is the malignity of sin. Possibly the weak- 
ness of philosophic restorationism has never been 
more clearly stated than by Dr. F. H. Hedge, " It 
assumes," he says, " an inevitable triumph of self- 
recovery — a fatality of goodness in man which 
seems to be based on no analysis of human nature, 
which certainly is not warranted by any mundane 
experience, and whose only voucher, so far as we 
can see, is a brave hope, which, however honorable 
to those who cherish it, is of no great use in the 
critical investigation of this subject." 

There are others who say that souls can become 
incorrigible, and that the fate of all incorrigible 
souls is extinction. Only those live forever who 
live in Christ, all others perish. This belief is 
based on arguments drawn both from Scripture 
and from reason. For instance, the fire into which 
the tares are thrown does not purify, it consumes. 
And the fires which were kept burning in the 
valley of Hinnom consumed the refuse with which 
they were fed. Moreover, if we give Christ's 
words the significance which they possess in 
everyday speech, what are we to understand by 
a sentence like this, " Wide is the gate and broad 
is the way that leadeth to destruction ? " Does 
not destruction mean dissolution ? Or a sentence 
like this, " God so loved the world, that he gave 



272 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
in him should not perish." Does not perish mean 
disintegrate ? Or what shall we do with such as- 
sertions as these, " If any man eat of this bread, 
he shall live forever." " Except ye eat the flesh 
of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have 
no life in you." "Whoso eateth my flesh and 
drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise 
him up at the last day." 

There are many words of Jesus which taken at 
their face value would seem to indicate that only 
those exist forever who live in him. Moreover, does 
not Paul say that he suffers the loss of all things in 
order that he may win Christ, and that his constant 
effort is to know him and the power of his resur- 
rection, if by any means he might attain unto the 
resurrection of the dead ? And what seems thus 
suggested by Scripture finds many confirmations in 
reason. If the incorrigibly wicked finally pass out 
of existence, the same process is continued in the 
spiritual world with which scientists have made us 
familiar in the animal and vegetable creations. 

There is such a thing in nature as the survival of 
the fittest. Only those species continue to exist 
which bring themselves into harmonious relation 
with their environment. May it not be so with 
souls ? To know God is life eternal, and not to 
know him is dissolution and extinction. If only 
the good finally survive, we have at last a universe 
without spot and without wrinkle. The dualism 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 273 

against which the philosophic mind rebels, has been 
done away with, and we have a universe without a 
shadow and without a stain. But this again is 
largely speculation. If it be true, as the Scrip- 
tures assert, that man is created in the image of 
God, how can we be sure that he is any less eternal 
than God who made him ? 

There are others who shrink from the awful 
thought of the extinction of the soul, and yet who 
do not dare to affirm that every soul will at last 
attain to the beatific vision. These persons lay 
emphasis upon the love of God and upon the free- 
dom of the will. They assert that God's mercy 
endures forever, and this being so the door is open 
forever. The return of the prodigal to the Father's 
house is always a possibility. Therefore, while it 
is presumption to say that all souls will certainly 
return, it is not beyond our privilege to hope that 
every soul will sooner or later choose the right. 
Since the love of God is eternal, there is room for 
eternal hope. A quarter of a century ago, Fred- 
erick W. Farrar, in a series of sermons delivered in 
Westminster Abbey, proclaimed this eternal hope 
in tones which have ever since been vibrating 
around the world. 

But up to the present time the majority of Bible 
students have been driven to the conclusion that 
the Scriptures do not allow us to expect that all 
souls will eventually be saved. That there are 
souls which will endure forever and be fixed in a 



274 S/ N, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

state of unblessedness has much in its support in 
the Scripture, and is not without support in reason. 
There is a tone of finality in the gospels which 
every sensitive heart must feel. Men are left in 
outer darkness, and not a word is spoken of their 
return. The gulf is fixed. Dives cannot pass 
from one side to the other. The tares are sepa- 
rated from the wheat ; they are never again min- 
gled. Useless fish are thrown away and are never 
picked up again. The evil tree is cut down, and 
is no longer allowed to cumber the ground. There 
is such a thing as an eternal sin, and at the judg- 
ment day some pass to eternal punishment and 
others to life eternal. 

The New Testament does not allow us to get 
away from the fact that it is appointed unto men 
once to die, and after that the judgment ; and the 
human heart listening to the message, and unspoiled 
by speculation, instinctively cries out, " How shall 
we escape if we neglect so great salvation ? " More- 
over, what seems to be intimated in the Scriptures 
is borne out by experience and by reason. We 
know that in this world bad men can become fixed 
in their wickedness. We also know that there are 
souls so in love with evil that they resist steadfastly 
all the persuasions of love up to the point where 
death receives them from our sight. Nor is it an 
offence to reason to believe that the human soul is 
of such dignity and stature that it has the power to 
resist God forever. No other theory of the final 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 2?$ 

condition of souls does such justice to the majesty 
of man as this one. One theory makes him so cheap 
that he can be dissolved, another theory makes him 
so weak that suffering will break down his powers 
of resistance and bring him back to God. But if 
we say that it is possible for a soul to be lost forever, 
then we are asserting that the power of resistance 
in the human will is immeasurable, and that man 
has been intrusted with so much liberty that he can 
defy the king of heaven forever ! 

To think, then, that it is possible that some 
souls may never be saved, is neither barbarous nor 
preposterous. Think twice before you laugh at 
people who believe that that is the teaching of the 
Scriptures. It is easy to caricature this belief, and 
people who have the most to say against eternal 
punishment usually direct their thunderbolts against 
ideas which are not a part of the doctrine at all. 
One man says, " How preposterous it is that God 
should punish a man forever for a few sins which 
he has committed within the limits of the three- 
score years and ten of his earthly pilgrimage ! " 
That does not state the case fairly. Nobody 
believes that a man will be punished forever for 
the sins he has committed on earth. If any man 
is punished forever, it will be simply because he 
sins forever. It is too frequently taken for granted 
that it will not be possible for a man to sin in the 
other world. The question is, Is there such a 
thing as unending sin ? You cannot answer that 



276 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

question with a sneer. Another man says that 
the whole idea of endless punishment is abomina- 
ble, because we cannot think of a father punishing 
a child forever. This sounds plausible, but it is 
shallow. The relation of the child to his earthly 
parent is not the relation of a soul to God. The 
punishments which an earthly parent may inflict are 
all of them superficial. A child may be whipped, 
or he may be shut up, or certain privileges may be 
denied him ; but no punishment which the father 
can inflict reaches the fibre of the mind or the 
structure of the soul. 

Sin, however, is an acid which eats into the mind, 
it is a poison which runs through the blood of the 
soul. If a child puts out his eyes, his earthly father 
cannot restore them. The question is, Is it possible 
for the soul to put out its eyes ? Every now and 
then somebody announces with great eclat that if 
he should find himself in heaven, and should know 
that there was only one soul in the outer darkness, 
he would immediately leave the heavenly mansion 
and go out in search of the one that was lost. This 
has a Christian sound, and seems quite beautiful to 
those who have not yet learned to think. If a man 
thinks he is saying something when he is saying 
nothing, he deceives himself and also may deceive 
others. A man who talks about leaving heaven and 
going out after a soul that is lost, has conceptions 
of heaven and Gehenna which are worthy of the 
nursery. It is not so easy to pass from the home 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENI 277 

of the blessed to the home of the wicked as all 
such speeches would indicate. There is no reason 
for thinking it will be any easier to cross the awful 
gulf which yawns between goodness and badness 
in the other world than it is to cross the gulf which 
yawns between good and evil in this world. 

There is a man in the penitentiary at Sing Sing. 
He is a vicious, hardened criminal. He was brought 
up in a Christian home, went to church, and was a 
member of the Sunday-school. But in his youth 
he fell in with bad companions. They led him 
astray. He trampled under his feet many of the 
commandments of God. By and by he married. 
In time there were children round the table. The 
early habits of the father did not melt away in the 
atmosphere of the home ; he continued his drink- 
ing. One day, in a fit of anger, he so injured his 
little boy that the boy died. The matter was 
hushed up, and the police never knew the tragedy 
of the home. The mother knew it ; she sickened 
and died. The man grew more desperate with the 
years. At last his mother's heart broke under the 
weight of his accumulating sins. He sank from 
bad to worse until, at last, in a dark moment, he 
killed a man. They sent him to the penitentiary, 
and there he is, vicious, hardened, devilish. Can 
you go from your lovely home to where that man 
is ? It is easy to take the train for Sing Sing ; it 
is easy to enter the cell ; it is easy to take the man 
in your arms. But have you reached him ? Are 



278 SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 

you where he is ? No. You cannot reach him ; 
you cannot get where he is. The gulf is fixed. 
He has sinned so far that he has become sin. He 
is an organized appetite. He is an incarnate lust. 
His soul is fixed in evil, and you cannot reach him. 
But to say that in any case the lost condition is 
unending, is pure speculation. The Scriptures do 
not make it plain beyond question. This may seem 
a reckless statement to those who have always 
supposed that eternal must of necessity mean unend- 
ing. But the word " eternal " is not so unambiguous 
as it seems. In the gospel of John it is sometimes 
used in the sense of spiritual. The word expresses 
quality sometimes rather than quantity. And even 
when the idea of duration lies in the word, it is not 
possible to tell how far the duration extends, for 
the ancients used the word " eternal " as freely as we 
do. They spoke about the everlasting hills, and 
the everlasting stars, and so do we, although we 
know that hills and stars will some day have an 
end. We do not speak of the eternal flowers 
or trees or the eternal houses, because all these 
things have an end which is in sight. Anything 
whose end is not in sight is to us eternal, and in a 
single sentence we might apply the word " eternal " 
to an object which will some day end, and also to an 
object whose existence is unending. We might, 
for instance, speak of the eternal stars of the eter- 
nal God. It is because of the ambiguity which 
lurks in the Greek word aionion, translated some- 



S/JV, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 279 

times in the King James's version by " everlasting," 
and in our revised version by the word "eternal," 
that it is impossible to affirm with absolute cer- 
tainty that the penalties spoken of in the gospel 
will never come to an end. All that we can say is 
that in the teaching of Jesus penalty has no end 
which is in sight. 

What, then, is the difference between the teach- 
ing of the Universalist church and the teaching 
of the Evangelical church ? It is often said that 
there is no difference at all. It has been frequently 
asserted that the Universalist church does not 
grow in this country because it is no longer needed. 
All churches, some people tell us, have passed over 
to the Universalist platform and all preachers hold 
Universalist doctrine, even if they do not preach 
it. People who speak thus speak recklessly. It 
is not true that the churches of this country have 
passed over to the Universalist position. A Uni- 
versalist church is built on the assumption that all 
souls, no matter how long or how grievously they 
sin, are absolutely certain at some time or other 
to enter into eternal blessedness. It is a cardinal 
doctrine in the Universalist creed that it is impos- 
sible to sin to such a degree as that the beatific 
vision may be lost. Universalist ministers, when 
they are true to their creed, do not hesitate to 
stand in their pulpit and say with Theodore Parker, 
that there is not in the human family a son of per- 
dition, and that every prodigal, no matter how far 



280 sin, and its punishment 

he wanders, will sooner or later find his way back 
to the Father's house. I do not see how men can 
say that. I cannot understand how they know 
enough to be able to say that. Certainly all such 
assertions run beyond the limits of what is written. 
How can any man know the power of resistance in 
the human will ? And how dare any man assert 
that sin, no matter how long continued in, can 
finally be escaped ? 

What do the Evangelical churches do ? They 
leave the whole matter just where Jesus left it. 
The New Testament leaves certain sinners in the 
outer darkness. The Christian church leaves them 
there too. If there is a way of putting an end to 
that darkness, God alone knows it, and if it is pos- 
sible to do it, he will do it. The New Testament 
leaves men on both sides an impassable gulf. The 
New Testament does not bridge the gulf. The 
Christian church does not bridge it. If there is 
a way to bridge it, God alone knows how. If it is 
possible to do it, he will do it. According to the 
New Testament, some go into eternal punishment 
and some into life eternal. If there is a way by 
which the soul can pass from punishment to life, 
God alone knows it. The Christian church has not 
had that way revealed. The Christian church then 
at the beginning of the twentieth century takes 
the words of Jesus and neither adds to them nor 
subtracts from them. In the creed of the church 
of which we are members, we simply quote Jesus' 



SIN, AND ITS PUNISHMENT 28 1 

words and allow every member to put upon those 
words what interpretation seems most in accord 
with all we know of God and man. It is not hard 
to leave the matter here, for is not God our Father, 
and does he not know our frame ? And is not 
Christ our Brother, and has he not been tempted 
in all points even as we are ? And shall not the 
judge of all the earth do right ? 



XI 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING 

GOD 



XI 

THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

" The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of 
the truth." — I Timothy iii : 15. 

"I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the 
communion of saints." A few moments ago we 
repeated in concert those words, and since this 
morning's sun rose they have been on the lips of 
tens of thousands of Christian people. For fifteen 
hundred years they have been constantly repeated 
by a large proportion of the entire Christian church, 
and to most of us they have been familiar since the 
days of childhood. What do the words mean ? 

We do not necessarily understand words because 
they are familiar. Expressions often become so 
smooth that they slip through the mind without 
communicating any message. What do we mean 
when we say "holy church"? The word "holy" 
has two meanings in the Bible. It sometimes 
means sinless ; it always means sinless when ap- 
plied to God. When we say, " Holy, holy, holy, 
Lord God Almighty ! " we confess his sinlessness. 
But holy does not always mean sinless in the 

285 



286 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

Scriptures. We read of the holy day, the holy 
place, the holy temple, the holy Scriptures, the 
holy people, the holy nation, the holy things. Any 
person or anything dedicated to the service of 
Almighty God is counted holy. The holy church, 
therefore, is not a sinless church, but a church 
consecrated to the service of the Almighty. 

The word "Catholic" also has two meanings, — 
one historic and the other sectarian. Catholic is 
a Greek word meaning whole, universal, entire. In 
the early centuries of Christian history Christians 
were not agreed as to what writings should consti- 
tute the Scriptures. Some discarded the writings 
of Paul ; some cared little for the gospels ; some 
thought the Old Testament was sufficient ; others 
would accept nothing but the New. But the ma- 
jority of Christians demanded a Catholic Bible, a 
Bible expressing the whole truth, and the church 
became known as Catholic because of the univer- 
sality of its teaching. 

In the course of time the church became extended 
throughout several continents. In order to distin- 
guish the great body of professing Christians from 
smaller bodies that sprang up here and there, the 
word " Catholic " took on a deeper meaning, and the 
church was Catholic not only because it embraced in 
its teaching the whole truth, but because it extended 
throughout the world. But the word "Catholic" 
may be used also in a sectarian sense. The 
Christians whose supreme bishop is the Bishop of 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 287 

Rome have taken that name to themselves. When 
a Roman Catholic says he believes in the Catholic 
church, he uses the word in a sectarian sense, 
confining his thought simply to the church of 
which the Pope is the head. When we use the 
word, we give to it its historic significance. It 
calls up before our mind the church universal. 
The Holy Catholic Church, therefore, means the 
universal church consecrated to the service of God. 
The word " saint" also has two meanings, — the 
ancient and modern. According to the modern 
meaning a saint is a Christian who has been can- 
onized by the church, or a Christian preeminent in 
piety. But in New Testament times every pro- 
fessing Christian was called a saint. It is the 
common name which St. Paul applies to all the 
followers of Jesus. "The saints salute you." 
" Salute all the saints." Such are common ex- 
pressions in his letters. The expression, " Com- 
munion of saints," then means the society of the 
professed followers of Jesus. The Holy Catholic 
Church is the universal society of believers. When 
we say each Sunday morning that we " believe in 
the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of 
saints," we are simply asserting our belief in the 
Christian society. But the Christian society exists 
in two forms. It is a fact and it is also a dream. 
It is actual and it is also ideal. When we say we 
believe in the church, we are to think not simply of 
the church of history, or of the church as it exists 



288 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

to-day, but we are to think of the church which is 
to be, the church as it exists in the mind of God, 
the church as contemplated in the consummation 
of his far-reaching plans. Over the top of the 
church as it is we are to see the glory of the church 
which is without spot and without wrinkle. As 
Fairbairn puts it, "The church is the symbol of 
the completed work of Christ." 

The Apostles' Creed is not peculiar in giving 
place to an expression of belief in the church. All 
the great creeds of Christendom include the Chris- 
tian church as one of the integral features of the 
Christian religion. Its importance is acknowl- 
edged in the Nicene Creed, and in the Athanasian 
Creed. It has its place in the Augsburg Confes- 
sion of the Lutherans, and the Westminster Con- 
fession of the Presbyterians, and the Thirty-nine 
Articles of the Church of England. Christians 
of every land and time have felt that their creed 
would be incomplete without a declaration con- 
cerning their loyalty to the church of the Living 
God. 

And in this the Christians of the world have 
acted wisely, for the New Testament is full of the 
glory of the church. There are only two objects 
in the Scriptures of supreme importance, — one is 
Jesus Christ and the other is his church. In the 
gospels the church is in process of formation. Not 
much is said about it, for it has not yet been de- 
veloped into a form by which it can appeal to the 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 289 

imagination and the heart. The only Christian 
church in the gospels is the apostolic band, and 
upon this little company of twelve men Jesus 
lavishes a large part of the wealth of his time and 
thought and love. As soon as he finds a man who 
is willing to say, "Thou art the Messiah, the Son 
of the living God," Jesus declares that he is now 
ready to begin to build his church and asserts that 
the gates of hades shall not prevail against it. 
From that day in Caesarea Philippi down to the 
last evening in the upper chamber Jesus gave him- 
self with unflagging industry to the perfecting of his 
church. To weld these twelve men together, to 
knit their hearts together, to mould them into a 
compact and conquering brotherhood, this was the 
supreme ambition of all his days. Around these 
twelve men, others were gradually organized, and 
on the day of Pentecost we find a church of one 
hundred and twenty members ready to make its 
appeal to the world. 

From the day of Pentecost onward the church is 
always in our sight. The book of the Acts takes 
delight in telling us how it fares with the churches. 
Luke, by the manner of his writing, assures us that, 
like his friend Paul, he loves the church which Jesus 
has purchased with his blood. As soon as we enter 
the epistles of St. Paul, there is only one institu- 
tion which is commanding and glorious, and that is 
the church. The man who at one time had made 
havoc of the church now bankrupts language in his 
u 



290 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

efforts to find metaphors rich enough to symbo- 
lize to men's minds something of the significance 
which he sees in the Christian society. He passes 
from metaphor to metaphor in his desire to find 
a figure which will vividly body forth his thought. 
The church, he says, is a family ; at another time 
he declares it is the household of faith ; again he 
calls it a temple, the very shrine of the eternal; 
again he calls it the pillar and the ground of the 
truth, that by which the truth is supported, and 
made regnant in the world ; again he calls it the 
body of Christ, and elaborates his conception in 
the most marvellous manner ; again he personifies 
it, and calls it a bride, the bride of God's only Son. 
But all these figures together do not exhaust the 
meaning of its nature or its function. It is a 
medium of revelation, an organ of the Almighty in 
which both men and angels are to behold the mani- 
fold wisdom of God. Paul will not allow himself to 
be discomfited or cast down by the conceited and 
quarrelsome and worldly minded churches with 
which he has to do. Over all the disheartening 
facts of present life he gazes down the vista of the 
centuries, and there the church stands erect in 
robes of glory like a lovely woman waiting for the 
bridegroom. Nor is Paul alone in this exalted 
conception of the Christian church. Open that 
wonderful book, the book of the Revelation, full of 
mysterious colors and thunders, a book of conflict 
and convulsion and catastrophe and warfare, full 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 29 1 

of blood and horror and darkness, and at the 
very beginning we hear a voice speaking to the 
churches. They are stars which Christ holds in 
his hands, they are candlesticks in the midst of 
which he walks. They are to furnish light to the 
race which has lost its way. And after we have 
passed through the tumults and crises of the book 
we come at last to one final and splendid vision of 
the church. Now it is a city, a New Jerusalem 
coming down from God out of heaven prepared 
as a bride adorned for her husband. It is worth 
noting that both Paul and John, when they think 
of the church at her best, think of a beautiful 
woman in the hour of her most fascinating loveli- 
ness waiting for the bridegroom. 

But when we come out of the New Testament 
into the twentieth century, we find ourselves in a 
different atmosphere. In the New Testament all 
the voices unite in saying, " We believe in the Holy 
Catholic Church, the communion of saints." It is 
the bride of the Lamb to which is given glory and 
honor. It is the church of the Living God, and in 
its presence men speak in tones that are reverent 
and loving. But the atmosphere of the modern 
world is full of scepticism. " What is the use of 
the church ? " men say, and they say it in a tone 
which gives an answer. " Is not religion a matter 
entirely between the soul and God ? Is the church 
an essential part of the Christian religion ? Can- 
not a man be a good Christian, and remain un- 



292 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

identified with the church ? Can he not be loyal 
to Christ and still hold aloof from the Christian 
society ? Is it not enough to live the Sermon on 
the Mount and establish its principles in one's 
life ? What more does God ask or can man expect 
than that we should love God with all our heart 
and our neighbor as ourself ? " 

There is probably no other article in the Christian 
creed against which so many plausible things can 
be said as against the article which declares our al- 
legiance to the church. This scepticism proceeds 
to different lengths in different men. One man 
believes in the church to the extent of attending 
and supporting its services, thinking it is a good 
thing, a useful and necessary thing, nevertheless he 
will not ally himself with it. Church membership 
is not one of the Christian duties, the church is not 
an integral part of the religion which Christ came 
to establish. Other men believe in the church just 
as they believe in the police force. The police force 
is necessary and must be supported to maintain 
order, and to keep society sane and healthy. The 
Christian church, a religious police force, must also 
be supported. But a man may believe in the police 
force and not be willing to become a policeman him- 
self. So there are men who believe in the Chris- 
tian church who refuse to become church members. 
There are others who consider the church a neces- 
sary institution, but they look down upon it as a 
sort of kindergarten intended for the development 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 293 

of the young and the ignorant and the poor. Just 
as some of us consider the Sunday-school not an 
institution for adults, but intended primarily for 
little children, so many persons outside the church 
look upon the church as a society exceedingly bene- 
ficial for the training of the wayward and the im- 
mature, but in which educated, full-statured men 
need have no part. If a man is ignorant, weak, 
lonesome, struggling against bad habits, then by all 
means let him join the church. Men of strength 
and full-orbed character may pass by on the other 
side. There are others who would go still farther 
and sweep the church away altogether. They can- 
not speak of it except in tones of scorn. To them 
it is a nuisance, an impertinence, a stumbling- 
block, a yoke of bondage, a curse. It is a breed- 
ing-place for hypocrites and bigots, an institution 
of tyranny, a survival of a bygone age, something 
to be eliminated before humanity can pass onward 
into an era of liberty and love. Such was the 
doctrine which Zola taught with enthusiasm and 
distinction. 

In a world so filled with scepticism concerning 
the value of the Christian church, it is a great 
thing which we do every Sunday morning when we 
stand upon our feet and repeat together our belief 
in the holy universal church. On every hand 
there are men reputable, respectable, educated, 
honored, who say in editorials, magazines, books, 
and conversation, " We do not believe in the univer- 



294 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GGD 

sal church." Against this unbelief of the world 
we hurl our solid declaration, " I believe in the 
Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints." 

Why do we believe in it ? The world challenges 
us at this point, and we must be ready with our 
answer. Let me suggest this morning the general 
features of an answer which every Christian may 
reasonably make. 

Man is a social being. He is made for society. 
He cannot live his life alone. If he tries to do so, 
he remains dwarfed and stunted. We are dependent 
on one another. We are dependent on others for 
our physical life. A savage might live for a time 
in the woods on roots, unassisted by other men, but 
a savage is only a fragment of a man, an embryonic 
man who has not yet begun to live. The physical 
life of civilized man is made possible by the co- 
operation of his fellows. A thousand men labor 
together to produce our dinner. We are depend- 
ent upon others for our mental life. The stimulus 
which sets the wheels of the mind in action comes 
from contact with other minds. Our intellectual 
life has not been built up in solitude. It has been 
built up by the cooperation of many teachers. 
Our spiritual life also is drawn from others. Faith 
and hope and love do not drop into the soul out of 
some shining cloud; they are borne to us on the 
loving accents of friendly voices. Society is indeed 
an organism, and each man is a part of the general 
body. No one lives to himself, and no one dies to 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 295 

himself. A man becomes a man only as his life is 
merged in the life of others. 

A man cannot do his work alone. Trifles may- 
be done without assistance, but the world has 
never known a mighty work accomplished without 
cooperation. Men must work together when they 
wish to do great things. Combination is one of 
God's great principles upon which the world is or- 
ganizing its modern life. The miracles which are 
wrought to-day in the commercial and industrial 
worlds are possible only because men have learned 
more completely how to unite their forces. The 
greater the work attempted, the more necessary it 
is that men shall be massed. The finer and grander 
the effects which we aim at, the more necessary 
becomes whole-hearted cooperation. 

If men to do their finest work must work 
together, then organization is a necessity. Men 
cannot work together without order. Order cannot 
live without a body, and the body of order is 
organization, machinery. The great work of the 
world must be carried on by institutions. These 
are not only the homes of ideas, but also the homes 
of men. Not only are conceptions and men nour- 
ished by institutions, but institutions have the 
power of propagating influences and transmitting 
them from generation to generation. Up to this 
point all sane men walk together. 

But if no man can live his life alone, how can a 
Christian live alone? A Christian is only a man 



296 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

at his best. A man is a Christian when he lives as 
God intended him to live. The Christian religion 
teaches us that God is our Father, and that all men 
are brethren. We are, therefore, members of one 
great family. We are to love God, and we are also 
to love man. On these two hang the law and the 
prophets. A brother is not brotherly if he persists 
in living by himself. Family life is ruined if every 
member of the family insists on eating and living 
his life alone. Family life is impossible unless the 
members of the family come together. It is not 
true that religion is a matter entirely of the relation 
of the soul to God. Our relation to one another is 
as important as is our relation to God. If we are 
going to worship, says Jesus, and remember our 
brother has anything against us, we must first get 
right with him before we proceed with our worship. 
Where two or three are together in Christ's name, 
there he is in the midst. When two are agreed 
as to any matter, then the thing shall be granted. 
The New Testament knows nothing of isolated 
Christians. The New Commandment is that we 
love one another. " By this shall all men know ye 
are my disciples if ye have love one to another." 
You can be a savage alone, but not a Christian. 
Nor can we do a Christian's work alone. The 
work of the Christian is of two kinds. His first 
work is upon himself. He must be rich in Chris- 
tian graces, but what are the Christian graces? 
Almost all of them are flowers that blossom only 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 297 

in society. The Christian society is the school in 
which the hard lessons are learned. It is there 
that we receive the discipline without which we 
are rough and incomplete. What we men need is 
to have our idiosyncrasies rubbed off, our conceit 
taken out, our impatience curbed, our selfishness 
checked, our wilfulness subdued. Where will a 
man better learn patience and considerateness and 
forbearance and brotherly kindness than in the 
Christian church ? It is only when we get men 
and women of all tempers and temperaments, con- 
ditions and grades of culture together, that there is 
scope for the exercise of those virtues which are 
most pleasing to God. 

Moreover, the Christian church is a witness. It 
must bear testimony to the power of its Lord. 
What would one solitary voice amount to in a 
world so noisy as this one is ? No single voice, 
however mighty, can speak the Christian message 
in a tone that will be heard. The message must 
be blown through a trumpet, and that trumpet is 
the Christian church. A million men beaten 
together into an instrument — that alone is suffi- 
cient to carry the good news to a half-deaf world. 

Moreover, the church is a soldier. Rightly do 
we call it the church militant. We are in the 
midst of a great rebellion. Men everywhere are 
in insurrection against the laws of the Almighty. 
It is not true, as superficial people sometimes say, 
that all men want to do right. Many men want 



298 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

to do wrong. They love to do wrong. They are 
determined to do wrong until the end of the day. 
It is the work of the Christian church to breathe 
an obedient spirit into the hearts of these rebels, 
to persuade them to lay down their arms. How is 
the rebellion to be put down unless men mass them- 
selves together for the mighty conflict ? Great ideas 
never travel in this world alone. They are impo- 
tent unless backed up by men. Individual men 
can avail nothing against the massed forces of 
aggressive evil. It was a great idea that this 
Union of ours should be one and inseparable, but 
how did we carry that idea to the Gulf ? Certainly 
not by the proclamation of isolated voices, nor by 
the writings of isolated editors, nor by the sermons 
of isolated preachers. Whenever we have a mighty 
work to do and want to do it, we say to one 
another, " Now let us get together and this thing 
shall go." And so in 1 861-2-3, when we were 
determined that the idea of union should rule from 
the Lakes to the Gulf, we massed a million men 
and carried that idea to victory. 

The Christian religion has great ideas. They 
are opposed by the natural heart of man. Large 
sections of humanity are bitterly hostile to the 
fundamental principles of the gospel. How shall 
we carry these ideas to victory unless we put 
behind them great cohorts of massed men who 
will march shoulder to shoulder under one flag, 
and never halt or retreat until the battle has 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 299 

been won ? The finest effects are not possible 
in the world without cooperation, and it is the 
aim of the Christian religion to produce fine 
effects. A single human voice can produce music, 
and so also can a single instrument ; but if we want 
the great and overwhelming effects of music, we 
must bring many voices and many instruments 
together. An individuarChristian may do a little 
work in his own field in his own way, but the 
mightiest effects that have been produced on the 
world have been produced by Christians acting 
together. 

If Christians, then, to do their work must get 
together, we must have church organization. 
There must be church machinery. The spirit of 
Christ is too passionate and earnest to remain a 
disembodied spirit. In this world the spirit of 
Christ is a yearning to make men better, to bring 
them into communion with God. We cannot con- 
ceive of such a spirit as that walking this earth 
like a ghost. Let such a spirit take possession 
of the hearts of a half-dozen men, and immediately 
they will say to one another, " Let us get together 
and lay out the plan of our campaign and get other 
men to help us ; let us see what can be done." 
The Christian church is the inevitable creation of 
the Christian spirit. The Christian spirit cannot 
survive without the church any more than a man's 
spirit can survive in this world without his body. 
Drop a spark of life anywhere in this world and 



300 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

it will immediately begin to organize around it 
a body. Let the spirit of Christ fall upon 
isolated hearts, and immediately those hearts will 
want to get together. Burn all the churches 
in the world with all their Bibles and all their 
creeds, and let but one spark of the Christian 
spirit remain, and out of the ashes will come 
another church ; for wherever the spirit of Christ 
is, there must be the church also. Where Christ 
is, there is the church. 

There have always been men in the world who 
have had an antipathy to machinery. There are 
men who do not believe that the state should have 
a government. These men are known as anarchists. 
An anarchist is a man who does not believe in 
machinery. Sometimes he is poor and ignorant 
and wretched and blasphemous and foul, belching 
forth slaughter ; but not every anarchist is a demon. 
There are anarchists who are genteel and refined 
and of beautiful disposition and of high ideal. The 
worst that can be said against them is that they 
do not believe in government. " Down with it ! " 
they say. Why? Because many a government 
has proved tyrannical. "Away with army and 
navy ! " Why ? Because they have caused mis- 
chief. "Away with the laws ! " Why ? Because 
laws have often been unjust "Away with police- 
men ! " Why ? Because policemen have been bru- 
tal and been bought with bribes. An anarchist 
of the respectable type believes in nothing but 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 301 

ideas. He believes in justice and liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness just as intensely as you and I 
do. "Away with machinery," he cries, "and let 
us have the free play of ideas ! " That man is an 
anarchist in politics. Other men are anarchists in 
religion. They say : " Give us the ideas of the 
Christian religion, — the Fatherhood of God, the 
brotherhood of man, the Golden Rule, the New 
Commandment, — all these are beautiful and 
good, let us have them ; but away with your 
machinery ! away with your creeds, your sacra- 
ments, your church officials, your church govern- 
ment ; let us have nothing but ideas!" We are 
all agreed that anarchists in politics are mistaken ; 
what shall we think of the anarchist in religion ? 
We all believe that anarchists in politics are dan- 
gerous ; is an anarchist in religion dangerous ? 

If we ask what produces anarchists, either in 
politics or in religion, the answer is, "The abuse 
of machinery." No man would ever have become 
an anarchist if government had always been just. 
Nor would any man have ever become an anarchist 
in religion if the Christian church had always been 
true to the law of God. But alas ! the Christian 
church has from the very start been imperfect. 
She has committed blunders without number ; she 
has been guilty of crimson sins — scarred and 
stained she is. And men familiar with her history 
have been ready to cry out in their impatience: 
" Better no church at all ! Why not allow 



302 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

humanity to cling to the great ideas which fell 
from the Master's lips?" When men taunt us 
about the imperfections of the church, what shall 
we say ? Let us frankly confess that the Christian 
church is a sinner. Every member of the church 
ought to acknowledge that the church has sinned, 
and that she sins continually. Like the Publican, 
there is nothing for her to do but to beat her 
breast and say, " God be merciful to me a sinner ! " 

But it must be remembered that imperfection 
is inevitable in institutions as in men. Consider 
first of all the material out of which the church is 
built. She must build herself of men ; there is no 
other material at hand. She opens her doors and 
asks all sorts and conditions of men to come in. 
They come, with their limitations, and their preju- 
dices, and their stunted affections, and their nar- 
row sympathies, and their ingrained vices, and 
their tempestuous passions, and their voracious 
appetites, bearing with them the inherited weak- 
nesses and inclinations of a thousand generations ; 
and out of such material as this how can you hope 
to erect a church immaculate and infallible ? 

The Christian church, because she is the church 
of God, makes herself of no reputation and takes 
upon her the form of a servant, and is willing to 
be found in the likeness of a sinner. She does not 
pick out the cultivated and beautiful characters 
of a city. She opens her doors wide and says, 
"Whosoever will, may come in." Little children 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 303 

come, and she accepts them, taking the risk of 
possible future transgressions. Ignorant people 
come, and she takes them, willing to train 
them out of their ignorance. People who are 
crude and rude come, and she accepts them, en- 
deavoring to complete their lives in Christ. If 
you are ever tempted to criticise the church, 
remember that it is an earthen vessel ; bear in 
mind that it is made out of dust. As well expect 
the Mississippi River to sweep southward from its 
northern source and bear in its bosom no discol- 
oration of the soil through which it flows, as to 
expect the Christian church to flow through 
human history and not carry along with it the 
impurities of the million hearts which have con- 
tributed their life to form the volume of its mighty 
current. The church of God must always show 
the discolorations of the soils through which it 
flows. 

And remember also the work which the Chris- 
tian church is called upon to do. It is called 
upon to fight a tremendous battle with a most 
desperate and stubborn foe. The church is not 
on dress parade. It is not in the world to make 
a show, but to do a work, and instead of counting 
up her blunders, let us at least occasionally think 
of the miracles which she has wrought in Jesus' 
name ! 

But see how divided the church is, some men 
say. She is split up into a hundred factions, every 



304 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

faction full of bitterness and hatred. How can 
you expect any man to give his devotion to a 
church which has forgotten all the Lord's teach- 
ing concerning the one shepherd and the one fold ? 
In answer to this arraignment, let us say that we 
acknowledge with humility and with sorrow the 
rancor and the strife of Christian history, the 
quarrels and the jealousies, the petty rivalries 
and unchristian ambitions — all this is sickening 
enough, but underneath all this there is some- 
thing for which we may return hearty thanks to 
Almighty God. The church is not so divided as 
it seems. Some of the divisions are not deep and 
do not touch the core. Many of the differences 
lie largely on the surface and do not transgress 
the law of Christ. The New Testament knows 
nothing of any unity except that which is purely 
spiritual. Christ in the upper chamber prays that 
his disciples may be one, but he does not ask that 
they may be one in ritual or in government. His 
prayer is, " That they may be one in us " — that is, 
in spiritual life, in love. Love is the basis of the 
union, and wherever there is love there is unity. 
Paul has the same idea. He urges his converts to 
"keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." 
In his letter to the Corinthians he reminds his 
readers that while there are diversities of operations 
and administrations, there nevertheless is the same 
spirit. 

Now that there is a deep pervading unity run- 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 305 

ning through the Christian world, no one con- 
versant with the facts can deny. There is no 
bitterness or rancor or strife in the hearts of the 
best Christians in any of our denominations. All 
churches, in their purpose, in their deepest spirit, 
in their loftiest aspirations, are one. Moreover, 
why should it be thought a thing so disgraceful 
that Christians should organize themselves in dif- 
ferent ways ? We do not wonder that the Germans 
prefer one form of government, and the Swiss an- 
other, and the English another, and the Americans 
still another. All this is natural and according to 
the law of God. It is better that there be a variety 
of governments in order that the genius of each 
people may be most fully developed. 

Why should we not find a variety therefore in the 
Christian church ? Why should not some Chris- 
tians prefer a monarchy with a Pope as supreme 
ruler ? And why should not other Christians prefer 
an Episcopacy with bishops and archbishops at the 
head ? Why should not others prefer a series of 
graded courts, — the session, the presbytery, the 
synod, the General Assembly — each being a foun- 
tain of authority and law ? Why should not others 
prefer democracy, choosing rather to leave all 
questions in the hands of the people ? There is 
such a thing as division of labor in the industrial 
and commercial worlds, and we all rejoice in it 
and think that it is in accordance with the will of 
the Eternal. Why should there not be a division 



306 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

of labor in the Christian church ? The Roman 
Catholic church is doing something better than 
any other church could possibly do it. The 
Episcopal church is doing something which no 
other church could do so well. Each denomi- 
nation has its own special mission, and God 
reveals himself in many ways lest one good 
custom might corrupt the world. The Roman 
Catholic cannot say to the Congregationalist, 
" We have no need of you." The Congrega- 
tionalist cannot say to the Episcopalian, " We 
have no need of you." The Episcopalian cannot 
say to the Methodist, "We have no need of you." 
The Methodist cannot say to the Baptist, " We 
have no need of you." All are necessary. Under 
all these different administrations and organizations 
there lives and works the self-same spirit — the 
Spirit of God. We utter only the truth when we 
sing: — 

" We are not divided, 
All one body we, 
One in hope and doctrine, 
One in charity." 

"But what is the Christian church doing?" 
somebody asks, with scornful intonation. " Why 
does not the church do something practical, and 
something which the world needs to have done?" 
This is an arraignment which one hears from many 
quarters, but one which it is not difficult to answer. ' 
Men who speak thus usually have in their mind's 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 307 

eye some specific task which they think the church 
ought to do. For instance, the church ought to 
settle strikes. If the church cannot settle strikes, 
why should there be a church at all ? The church 
ought to put an end to wars. If a church cannot 
end wars better have no church. The church 
ought to elect the best candidates to office. If 
the church does not do this, then let the church 
lie down and die. The church ought to give 
ex cathedra announcements in regard to the thou- 
sand problems which, like so many frogs, come up 
out of the Nile of modern life to disturb our com- 
plex civilization. 

Why does not the church do these things ? 
Because it is engaged in a greater business. 
The supreme work of the church is to make the 
human heart right. That is the one thing 
which she has been given to do. Just in pro- 
portion as she does that, does she fulfil her 
mission. There was a time when the church did 
just such spectacular things as men still clamor 
for. There was a time when the head of the 
church crowned and uncrowned kings and de- 
termined the direction in which nations should 
move. It was all very spectacular and very im- 
pressive in its way ; but the church in those days 
committed a great blunder. She exceeded her 
authority, went into fields where her Lord had 
never sent her. And by and by she was over- 
whelmed with disgrace and defeat. Let us hope 



308 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

the church will never repeat that blunder. The 
one thing which the world most needs is the new 
heart. To secure the new birth the church brings 
all her persuasions and all her powers, and she has 
no greater victory than the victory she wins when 
one sinner repents. When the human heart is 
right there will be no strikes, no wars, no injustices 
or outrages in the world. 

No man can be as brave and strong a Christian 
as he ought to be unless he keeps before him 
the glorious vision of the Christian church. 
Many a man is weak and timid in the Christian 
ranks because his vision of the church has faded. 
I wish that I might sketch for you this morning 
a picture of the church which would kindle your 
enthusiasm and make you strong. We talk about 
serving Christ, and ofttimes it means but little. 
How can you better serve him than by serving the 
church which is his bride ? We talk about making 
sacrifices for God. He is in need of nothing, why 
should we sacrifice for him ? We never make more 
grateful sacrifices for him than when we sacrifice 
for his church. 

The glory of the church of God is unique. It is 
surrounded by a thousand different institutions, 
but it is unlike them every one. Its great word of 
invitation is, " Come ! " m It caught that word from 
the lips of Jesus. Its cry is : " Ho, every one that 
thirsteth, come ye to the waters. Whosoever will, 
let him come and take of the water of life freely." 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 309 

It asks no question in regard to how much money 
a man is worth ; not a question does it ask in re- 
gard to his education or friends, his place in 
business or society ; not a query does it propound 
in regard to his influence or his prestige — all it 
asks is, " Do you want to be a new man in Christ ? 
and if so, come in." In a city like this where there 
are so many doors that open only to the man whose 
purse is full, and so many doors that open only to 
the man who has five talents, and so many doors 
that open only to the man of high position or social 
standing, thank God there is one door that opens to 
the touch of the humblest and poorest of all God's 
children, and that door is the door of the Christian 
church. 

No other institution makes so broad an appeal, 
and no other institution speaks the same kind of 
appeal. All around us there are institutions built 
upon a basis of profit. That is the basis upon 
which the commercial world is built. Every store 
says through its advertisements and through the 
great displays in its windows : " Ho, every one that 
wants a bargain, come ! If you want the most 
possible for your money, come ! " A large part 
of the social world is built upon the same basis. 
What does a club say but : " Ho, every one that 
wants social advantages, come ! Pay your money, 
and we will give you privileges which you cannot 
afford to live without." The world of pleasure is 
built upon the same basis. What does a theatre 



310 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

say but : " Ho, every one who desires a good even- 
ing's recreation, come ! Pay your money, and you 
shall behold something which is worth your seeing." 
The Christian church stands up in the midst of 
the stores and clubs and theatres, saying : " Ho, 
every one who wants to give, come ! Ho, every 
one who believes it is more blessed to give 
than to receive, come ! Are you willing to give 
time or money or strength or thought or health or 
prayer or devotion or love, then come. If you are 
willing to give, then come ; if you are unwilling to 
give, then stand aloof." No one has a right to enter 
the church of God who has not decided to make it 
the principle of his life to give himself for others. 

And the church carries this appeal to the most 
extraordinary extreme. " Come and give," it says, 
"yes, come and sacrifice." Jesus always made 
it clear that following him meant sacrifice. He 
would not send out his twelve apostles to preach 
until he had explained to them that they must be 
willing to suffer. Nor did he send out the seventy 
to preach until he had given them similar instruc- 
tions. Nor would he offer up his last prayer over 
the twelve in the upper chamber before he had 
emphasized the fact again and again that in the 
world they must expect tribulations. This is one 
of the cardinal elements in his teaching. In the 
list of the Beatitudes he puts this one : " Blessed 
are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute 
you, and shall say all manner of evil against you 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 311 

falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding 
glad ; for great is your reward in heaven, for so 
persecuted they the prophets which were before 
you." " Ho, every one that wants to suffer, come, 
and identify yourself with the Christian church." 
No man can be a man and do a man's work without 
paying the penalty ; no man can speak the Chris- 
tian message without being misinterpreted and 
misunderstood ; no man can do a piece of Chris- 
tian work without being criticised and maligned. 

You cannot touch an evil man without dis- 
covering that you have struck an empire. You 
cannot pull up one little thing that is wrong in 
society without discovering that that wrong thing 
is connected with a great system of evil. I have 
never known a man to be a positive force in the 
Christian church, doing his work bravely and with 
fidelity, who has not been called upon to suffer. 
" If any man will come after me, let him take up 
his cross and follow me," so said the Master, and 
in that tone all great leaders speak. Garibaldi 
said : " Men, I have not called you to pleasure. 
If you go with me, you will not have an easy time. 
I cannot promise you wealth or comfort. No, I 
call you to war, to long marches, to hunger and 
weariness, to discomforts a thousand fold, to fight- 
ing, and even to death. Will you come with me 
on these terms for our country's sake ?" 

But what shall be the reward? This is the 
reward. "Ye are the salt of the earth." You 



312 THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 

will keep humanity from rotting. "You are the 
light of the world." By your shining you will lead 
men to glorify your Father who is in heaven. 

What an appeal, then, the Christian church makes 
to every earnest-hearted man ! One sometimes 
hears the question, " Why should I join the church ?" 
Let me ask you why you should not join the church ? 
You are not in your right place until you are in the 
church. Humanity is lost without the church, and 
therefore you have no right to rob the church of 
that strength and influence which you could bring 
into it. 

Instead of asking, as some men do, whether the 
church is needed any longer, I should propound 
the question, When has the church been more 
needed? In an age like this, when the problems 
are crowding thick and fast upon us, problems so 
complicated and so immense that the human mind 
in their presence staggers and draws back, when 
mental bewilderments are so numerous and so 
awful, is there not need of a strong, immovable in- 
stitution, which shall bear calm witness to a few 
great facts and principles upon which the hopes of 
our humanity depend ? 

In an age when wealth is increasing in such 
amazing ways, when gold is piled in mountainous 
heaps which dazzle the eyes of those who have 
it not, and harden the hearts of those who have 
it, do we not need an institution which will keep 
on repeating the old story of the man who paid 



THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 313 

more attention to his barns than to his soul, and 
the thrilling parable of the man who had fine 
linen and a hard heart ? In an age of machinery, 
when the ear is filled with the thunder and roar 
of the turning wheels, and when men are so 
massed and so used that they tend to become mere 
contrivances in the colossal engine room of our 
modern civilization, do we not need an institution 
which shall keep crying, " Souls ! souls ! souls ! " 

And in an age when competition is so intense 
that it is furious, and when men in order to keep up 
with their ambitious rivals are tempted to overreach 
and to do the thing which is not right, and when 
the managers of corporations are tempted to use 
men as so many tools, picking them up and casting 
them off at their own good pleasure, sapping them 
of their strength and their life, and then throwing 
them aside as so many waste rags — do we not 
need an institution which shall force upon men's 
conscience the fact that every man is a child of 
God, and that the masters of this world have a 
Master in heaven? 

And in an age which everybody says is material- 
istic, whose atmosphere is darkened with dust, and 
whose skies are blackened with clouds which keep 
out the light of the sun, do we not need an institu- 
tion to remind us that God is in his heaven and 
still sits on his throne? And in an age when 
class hatreds are numerous and bitter, when one 
man misunderstands the other man, and different 



3i4 Ttils Church of the living god 

classes seem to be drifting farther and farther 
apart, should we not be thankful that there is one 
institution which stands for human brotherhood, 
which endeavors to realize and to express the 
fraternal idea, an institution which says in tones 
that do not falter, " One is your Master, and all ye 
are brethren." 

And in a century when the nations are rivals 
in the great field of commerce, and when the 
equipment of war is being rapidly increased, and 
when one silly tongue wagging on either side 
the sea can set a thousand silly tongues wagging 
on the other — is it not a great thing that there 
is one institution whose business it is to keep re- 
peating the angels' song of peace on earth ? 

Why should you identify yourself with the 
Christian church ? Because God needs you in the 
church. But there is a deeper reason. The New 
Testament always prefers the deep motives. The 
motive to which the New Testament appeals is 
that of gratitude. You ought to be in the Christian 
church because Christ loved you and gave himself 
for you. Though he was rich yet for your sake he 
became poor that you through his poverty might 
be rich. 



XII 

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE 
SOUL 



XII 

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

"O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy vic- 
tory ?" — I Corinthians xv : 55. 

It is a great day, and I bring you a great sub- 
ject, The immortality of the soul. Nothing but a 
shout of triumph will answer for a text this morn- 
ing. And I have found one in the most thrilling 
chapter which St. Paul ever wrote, the fifteenth 
chapter of 1 Corinthians : " O death, where is thy 
sting? O grave, where is thy victory ?" 

"If a man die, shall he live again?" It is an old 
question, as old as the race. It has been settled a 
thousand times and then unsettled again, and it is 
just as live a question now as it was at the begin- 
ning. Men cannot let it alone. It has a fascina- 
tion which draws and holds. One age decides it is 
a question which can never be answered, and there- 
fore should be let alone. The future, they say, is a 
sphinx, and why should you torment a sphinx to 
give you answers. But the very next age comes 
back and throws itself down in front of the sphinx, 
and says : "O sphinx, tell us your secret. If a man 
die, shall he live again ? " One generation immersed 

317 



318 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

in business or in pleasure cares nothing for the 
question. It pushes it aside as a tedious piece of 
speculation. "One world at a time — this world is 
good enough for us," so men shout as they hurry 
on to their business and their pleasure. But the 
next generation picks up the discarded question 
and asks with even increased intensity of interest, 
"If a man die, shall he live again?" A man at one 
epoch in his life cares nothing for the question. It 
does not appeal to him. He cares nothing for any 
question which runs beyond the glowing horizon of 
this lovely world. But follow that man, and you 
will find him by and by sitting down with the old 
question. He, too, is now pondering the problem, 
"If a man die, shall he live again?" This, I think, 
is a remarkable phenomenon, that age after age, 
generation after generation, should ponder the 
same old question and be unwilling to let it go. 
The reason why men will not let this question 
alone is because death will not let us alone. If we 
could banish the death angel, we should banish the 
problem ; but so long as death persists in coming and 
breaking the circle, in darkening the home, in crush- 
ing our castles, in putting out the light of the sun, 
just so long shall we be compelled to discuss the 
question, " If a man die, shall he live again ? " For 
years we do not care to ask the question, it has no 
interest for us, and then death, like a conqueror, 
comes stalking through the palace of our life, leav- 
ing behind him an empty chair, and in the shadow 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 319 

which the chair casts the words flash out like the 
words on the wall of Belshazzar's banquet cham- 
ber, and we read them, "If a man die, shall he live 
again?" 

It is surprising that this question should remain 
through so many ages an open question. Why has 
man not settled it long ago ? Why has the world 
not been able to give a sharp, decisive No? Cer- 
tainly appearances are against the probability of a 
man living after death. Why should a man live 
beyond the grave ? Look at man ! What a petty, 
insignificant creature he is, so frail that he must 
sleep almost one-third of his time, so fragile that a 
difference of a few degrees in temperature will wilt 
him down, so tiny that a fly can choke him, a pin 
scratch can kill him. Why should such a paltry 
creature dare to dream of immortality ? Look at his 
mind ! How sordid, how narrow are his sympathies, 
how petty his ambitions, how apparently fruitless his 
life! Upon what ground can such a creature dare 
to hope for a life as unending as the life of God ? 

If we are to be governed by appearances, then 
by all means let us say, if a man die, he shall not 
live again. The phenomena of our earthly life 
are suggestive of annihilation. Watch a man grow 
old, see his body in the processes of dissolution, 
his eyes failing, his ears growing dull, his limbs 
becoming decrepit, his whole strength and sub- 
stance gradually dissolving away. That a body is 
doomed to dissolution we know because the awful 



320 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

process goes on under our very eyes. But the 
mind itself seems to decay. Memory goes, judg- 
ment fails, imagination dies, reason at last totters 
and falls — the very soul seems to be in the pro- 
cess of dissolution, and if we are to be governed 
by appearances, then we must say that death ends 
all. But in spite of the disheartening phenomena 
of the death chamber, men persist in asking the 
question, "If a man die, shall he live again ?" 

Why do not men give the question up? In a 
scientific age like this, when demonstrative evidence 
is everywhere demanded, why should men persist in 
asking a question for which no demonstrative evi- 
dence is forthcoming ? If the soul lives after death, 
nobody can demonstrate that fact ; it can never be to 
us any more than a probability. No future event of 
any sort can be demonstrated scientifically. You 
cannot demonstrate that the sun will rise to-morrow 
morning, nor can it be demonstrated that you will 
reach your home at the close of this service, nor can 
you prove that your long-tried friend will be faithful 
to you five years from now. We build all our life 
on probabilities. We cannot demonstrate anything 
beyond the reach of our senses, or the powers of the 
mind. Death passes beyond our reach. No eye has 
seen, no ear has heard, no instrument has grasped 
the soul of mortal man after his body has decayed. 
The immortality of the soul cannot be demonstrated, 
and yet this scientific century of which we are a part 
is asking the question with more earnestness than 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 32 1 

any age since men began to bury in the earth the 
bodies of their dead. 

Since science is able to answer so many ques- 
tions, why has not science answered this one ? It 
has seemed more than once that science would close 
the question forever. Every now and then some 
bold scientist has shouted out with great assurance, 
"The question has been settled, there is no life 
beyond the grave." But when we have asked for 
evidence, we have received an answer which would 
not stand the test of thought. 

The Christian world has received two great 
frights within the last fifty years. The first man to 
alarm us was the physiologist. He discovered a 
wonderful thing. He discovered that there is a 
closer connection between brain and soul than the 
ancients ever imagined. It was once counted 
proper to liken the soul to the tenant in a house, 
to a passenger on a ship; but the physiologist dis- 
covered that those illustrations are not valid. The 
soul is more than tenant, more than passenger. 
The soul is inextricably bound up in some mysteri- 
ous manner with the very substance and fibre of the 
body. The physiologist discovered that we have 
different ideas in different portions of our brain. 
When we think one way, we use the frontal lobe; 
when we think another way, we use the occipital 
convolutions ; when we think another way, we use 
the temporal lobes. And if any lobe becomes in- 
jured or diseased, our thinking is impaired. The 



322 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

physiologist discovered that by injuring the brain 
at a certain point it is possible to change not only 
the color of a man's thought, but even his moral 
character also. A man who has lived apparently 
a saintly life will after an injury of a certain portion 
of the brain manifest all the qualities of the brute 
or even the demon. After these things had been 
demonstrated one man laid it down as an axiom, 
" No thought without phosphorus." Another man 
jumped to the bold conclusion that the brain 
secretes thought just as the liver secretes bile. 

When these things were first asserted in the 
name of science, the Christian church stood af- 
frighted, but the panic was only for a day. The 
psychologist came forward and told the physiolo- 
gist that he was speaking beyond the limits of his 
knowledge. All the facts which the physiologist 
had discovered did not prove that the brain secretes 
thought as the liver secretes bile. The physiologist 
had proved that thought is a function of the brain ; 
but there are different kinds of functions, and a 
function may be productive or it may be transmis- 
sive. Light, for instance, is a function of the elec- 
tric circuit, it is produced by the circuit. Destroy 
the circuit, and you have no light. The function 
is productive. And if thought were a productive 
function of the brain, then the destruction of the 
brain would of course mean the annihilation of the 
soul. But there is such a thing as a transmissive 
function. Music is the function of the organ, but 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 323 

the music is transmissive. Change the shape and 
size of the pipes, and you change the quality of the 
music; injure any one of the pipes, and you cause a 
deterioration in the tone. But the music, after all, 
is not produced by the organ, it is produced by the 
organist, and the music is in the organist and is 
transmitted to us through the organ pipes. Now 
the physiologist has never proved that the brain is 
an electric circuit. How does he know but that 
the brain is an organ upon whose delicately carved 
keys of gray the immortal spirit plays life's music? 
Change the condition of the brain's convolutions, 
and you indeed change the character of a man's 
thinking; but behind the organ stands the organist, 
and though the organ be destroyed the organist 
lives on. The church is afraid of the physiolo- 
gist no longer. 

The second man who frightened us was the 
evolutionist. He discovered something that no pre- 
ceding generation had ever seen so clearly. He 
found out that we are more intimately related to 
the animal creation than the ancients had believed. 
He pointed out the fact that we not only carry 
along with us many rudimentary organs, which are 
apparently an inheritance from the animal creation, 
but that in the mind itself there is a vast inheri- 
tance of brute instinct and inclination. When this 
great truth first broke upon the world on the lips 
of the apostles of evolution, many men at once 
leaped to the conclusion that if a man is like an 



324 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

\j animal in his origin, he must be like an animal in his 
death. Men began to use the language of the book 
of Ecclesiastes : " That which befalleth the sons of 
men befalleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them : 
as the one dieth, so dieth the other ; yea, they all 
have one breath ; so that a man hath no preeminence 
above a beast ; for all is vanity. All go unto one 
place ; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." 
The panic was a great one, but it lasted only for 
a week. Now that men have had time enough to 
think the doctrine of evolution through, it is dis- 
covered that probably no other hypothesis ever 
adopted by scientific men has so fortified the belief 
in immortality as this doctrine of evolution. For 
whatever may be said for or against the idea of 
evolution, it must be admitted that it has enlarged 
enormously the range of the imagination, it has 
broken down completely the little wall which we 
had built up behind us at the distance of six 
thousand years, and has persuaded us to think of 
immensities and eternities. It speaks naturally of 
myriads of ages, and will not allow us to think that 
either time or space is small. And along with this 
conception of vastness it has given us the idea of 
development. It tells us that there is a tremendous 
sweep upward. In the words of Emerson : — 

" A subtile change of countless rings, 
The next unto the farthest brings ; 
And striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form." 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 325 

Evolutionists speak of transmitted tendency. 
They say that through the ages one increasing pur- 
pose runs. They note the fact that the whole crea- 
tion travails and groans in pain, culminating at last 
in man. Now after evolution has convinced us that V 
we have come so far, it is almost impossible to be- 
lieve that we are not going any farther. If we 
have climbed so high, it is perfectly reasonable to 
believe that we shall climb higher. After all this 
tremendous outlay and cost, the mind will not be- 
lieve that the creation bursts like a bubble at death. 
A creature who is the highest product of millions 
of years of development is not going to end at the 
tomb. The Christian church has no longer any 
fear of the evolutionist. 

What has science then to say against the doctrine 
of immortality ? Not one word. What evidence 
has science to bring against it ? Not one shred or 
scrap. There is no evidence against it, said even 
John Stuart Mill, one of the keenest-eyed of all 
sceptics. We must make a distinction between 
science and scientists. There are scientists who 
say that there is no future life, just as there are other 
men who say the same ; but they say it, not because 
of any scientific evidence in their possession, but 
because of a peculiar bias of the mind. When 
Haeckel says that the doctrine of evolution com- 
pels us to give up belief in the future life, John 
Fiske very properly points out the fact that he 
never deduced his belief from the doctrine of evolu- 



326 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

tion, he is simply echoing the opinion of a French 
atheist of the eighteenth century. When we deal 
with the problem of immortality, we are in a region 
into which science can never go. We are in the 
world of probabilities. What has philosophy to say? 
It has many things to say in favor of the future life. 
It presents not one shred of evidence to prove that 
the soul is not immortal. Here we must distin- 
guish between philosophy and philosophers. There 
are philosophers who say that death ends all ; but 
as Fiske has pointed out, the assertion that the life 
of the soul ends with the life of the body is the 
most colossal and baseless assumption that is known 
to the history of philosophy. 

Let us look this morning at twelve candles, all of 
which throw light upon the problem of the soul's 
immortality. Four of these have been lighted by 
history, four by philosophy, and four by science. 
They are the twelve-branched candlestick which 
stands at the centre of our modern life. Or to 
change the figure, they are the twelve apostles 
which go out from the halls of reason to convince 
the world that if a man die, he shall live again. 

Our candles are so many facts, and the first fact 
is that all tribes and peoples have pictured a life on 
the other side of death. The belief in another life 
has been so well-nigh universal, we need take no 
account of the isolated savage tribes which may 
have been too low down to enter into this idea, 
which is the natural possession of the race. Not 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 327 

only do all peoples now living upon the earth be- 
lieve that there is something for them beyond the 
grave, but this has been true in every age of the 
history of the race. The paleontologist has dug 
up the bones of men who lived and struggled in 
the age of ice. Those prehistoric tribes of more 
than a hundred thousand years ago buried trinkets 
and utensils in the grave for the use of those whose 
spirits had left their bodies. That is a colossal 
fact — a race of beings through a hundred thousand 
years holding to the belief that the soul does not 
die at death. It would seem that the human mind 
is so constructed that it bends in that direction. 

The second fact is that this belief survives. Mrs. 
Browning has said that earth outgrows the mythic 
fancies sung beside her in her youth. But here 
is a belief that the earth has never yet outgrown. 
Fancies, dreams, and superstitions by the hundred 
have been outgrown and cast aside. Many of the 
conceptions of the early ages have been sloughed 
off as too narrow for our modern life ; but here is a 
belief that has in it a vitality that shows no signs 
of waning. It has a stronger grip upon the thought 
of the world to-day than it had a thousand years 
ago. A belief that survives through a hundred 
thousand years, passing through the storms and 
revolutions of the changing seasons — a belief which 
no fire can burn up, or dagger kill, is surely a be- 
lief that has in it the vitality of God's undying 
truth. 



328 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

The belief in immortality grows with the develop- 
ment of life. The higher a man is in the scale of 
being, the wider the sweep of his thoughts and the 
truer his affections, the more likely he is to believe 
that the soul is immortal. Men who are bestial 
and live close to the earth are not certain that they 
will live after death. It is the great-minded, great- 
hearted men of the race who have been the surest 
of the life everlasting. There were thousands of 
men in Greece, who lived little better than brutes, 
who did not know whether or not their souls would 
survive death. But when we come up to the great 
Greeks — Socrates, Plato, Euripides — we are in 
the presence of men who know that the soul is 
immortal. There was many a Roman who lived in 
the slime and had no convictions in regard to his 
soul's future ; but when we come to a great Roman 
like Cicero, we hear him asserting in the senate 
chamber that death does not destroy a man. Many 
a superficial and godless Frenchman has known 
nothing about immortality, nor cared anything 
about it ; but when we rise to such men as Montes- 
quieu and Victor Hugo, we are in the presence of 
men who know they will not die. Millions of Eng- 
lishmen have lived and passed away without any 
steadfast hope of life beyond the grave ; but when 
we sit down and talk with the great Englishmen of 
the centuries, — England's Shakespeares and Mil- 
tons and Gladstones, — we are assured that the 
soul is immortal. This, too, is significant then, that 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 329 

a belief which was born in a cave in the age of ice 
should be most vital and mighty in the hearts of 
the supreme men of our civilization. 

Not only does this belief grow, but it conquers. 
It works mightily upon the thoughts and affections 
of men. It braces man for new contests, it nerves 
him for great struggles, it fires him for vast enter- 
prises, it enlarges his sympathies, it purifies his 
affections. Under the sway of this belief man be- 
comes both taller and stronger. The more firmly 
men grasp the world that is coming, the more hero- 
ically do they struggle to make this world what it 
ought to be. A man is able to do hard things 
which draw the blood, and to persist in doing them 
to the end of the day if he knows that death is not 
the end. Men are steadfast, immovable, always 
abounding in the work of the Lord, when fully con- 
vinced that their labor is not in vain in the Lord. 
History has lighted for us those four candles, and 
in their light it is safe to walk. 

But philosophy has lighted candles also, and 
these burn no less brightly than those which we 
have just now considered. Not content with 
what lies upon the surface, the philosopher goes 
beneath appearances and studies out causes and 
relations. In his study of human nature he dis- 
covers certain facts, and from these facts he draws 
certain inferences. These facts we jnay say are 
candles. 

Man has an instinctive yearning and longing for 



330 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

immortality. If he does not have this, it is because 
he is not a normal man. It is an instinct which 
cannot be strangled without lasting injury to the 
heart. If a man does not believe in immortality, 
he will believe in something else far less credible. 
If he will not believe in personal immortality, he 
will believe in corporate immortality. That is, he 
will believe that he will continue to exist in the 
complex life of humanity. George Eliot was a 
trustful, noble, English Christian girl. At a criti- 
cal period of her life she fell under the influence of 
a sceptical German professor, who took away from 
her her Christian faith. She gave up her belief in 
immortality. But she could not go without belief 
altogether, and so she accepted the teaching of a 
Frenchman who was endeavoring to persuade his 
countrymen that the only immortality for which a 
man may hope is the hope of having one's life 
merged in the general life of the race. This be- 
came George Eliot's belief. She gave expression 
to it in her pathetic poem : — 

" O may I join the choi» invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence.' 1 

Under the influence of this belief the heart of 
George Eliot grew sad. There are others who 
go farther than she went, and who give up belief 
in immortality of every sort. In many cases these 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 331 

persons grow hopeless and bitter. The pessimism 
which has played such large part in the literature of 
modern Russia, Germany, and France has proceeded 
from hearts in which the belief in immortality has 
been crushed. What is pessimism but a great 
column of black smoke proceeding from a heart 
in which the hope of immortality has been burned 
to ashes. If a man remains normal, if he allows 
the current of his feeling to flow in the channel 
appointed for it, he believes in immortality. What 
are we to infer from this ? Tennyson has expressed 
the inference : — 

" Thou wilt not leave us in the dust, 

Thou madest man, he knows not why ; 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 
And thou hast made him, thou art just." 

Man has affections. They are an inextricable 
part of his life. They are as worthy of attention 
as are his thoughts. Love is as reliable as reason. 
The heart has reasons which the reason cannot 
understand. Now it is impossible for love at 
its strongest to believe that death ends all. From 
that horrid thought it shrinks back with a cry of 
pain. Poets are the prophets of the heart, and all 
the great poets teach immortality. After Tennyson 
had lost his dearest friend, he pondered for months 
the question, " If a man die, shall he live again ? " 
He was familiar with the scientific and philosophic 
writings of his time, and all the doubts which had 



332 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

been suggested by the writers of England and the 
continent passed in long processions through his 
mind. Sometimes he could hear a voice telling 
him to believe no more. But no sooner had he 
heard this voice than — to use his own language — 
his u heart stood up and answered, I have felt." 
Tennyson came out with the conviction that Arthur 
Hallam was still alive — his heart convinced him 
of it. That is the revelation given to us by all the 
poets. John Greenleaf Whittier, in " Snow Bound," 
speaks thus : — 

u Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust 
(Since he who knows our need is just), 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ; 
Who hath not learned in hours of faith 
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 
And Love can never lose its own. 1 ' 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a great thinker. He 
sometimes threw beliefs out of the door of his mind 
which came in through the window of his heart. 
Standing beside the grave of his little boy, he 
ponders the old problem, " If a man die, shall he 
live again ? " and there, with his boy's grave at his 
feet and God's sky above his head, he says : — 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 333 

" What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent ; 
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain ; 
Hearts 1 love will meet thee again. 
Revere the Maker ; fetch thine eye 
Up to his style, and manner's of the sky." 

The heart is a great teacher of immortality. If 
God made the heart, will the heart perpetually 
deceive us ? 

A man has a mind, and his mind is too large for 
this world. There is no scope for the employ- 
ment or satisfaction of all his powers. He is too 
great to be crowded within the narrow limits of 
seventy paltry years. We have in us latent powers 
for whose development we find here no opportu- 
nity. Our life at its best is fragmentary and 
unsatisfactory. As Emerson says, "God does 
not build magnificently for mice." Nor can we 
believe that God would build the human mind 
for the fleeting day of earthly life. The mind is 
never satisfied. It never knows enough. Those 
who know the most are hungriest for knowledge. 
Goethe had one of the greatest minds God ever 
intrusted to a mortal. He filled with industry 
a long life, and spent a great fortune upon the 
furnishing of his mind ; but when he lay down to 
die, at the age of eighty-three, he died with these 
words upon his lips, " Light, light, more light ! " 

A man is never able to do in this world what he 
wants to do. We all lay down our work before it 



334 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

is half completed. Victor Hugo, on his seventieth 
birthday, said : " Winter is on my head, and eternal 
spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the 
end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal 
symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is 
marvellous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale, and it is 
a history. For half a century I have been writing 
my thoughts in prose, verse, history, philosophy, 
drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song — I 
have tried all. But I feel that I have not said the 
thousandth part of what is in me." His language 
is the language of all great workers in the realm 
of character building. Who could have peace, if 
he felt that this life is all ? If we are intended to 
grow into the image of God, we must have another 
life in which to do it ; we can make only the begin- 
nings here. Before we have chiselled out the 
statue, the chisel falls from our hand. The por- 
trait which we paint is nothing but a charcoal 
sketch when the doctor tells us that we must die. 
The temple which we begin to build has not its 
foundations completed before the undertaker is at 
the door. We are made upon too great a scale for 
such a world as this, and there is down deep in us 
a quenchless desire for a fuller expression of our 
powers. " 'Tis life of which our nerves are scant, 
more life and fuller that we want." 

The world is incomplete. Everything is unfin- 
ished here. None of the processes is worked out. 
The world is inexplicable without another world. 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 335 

What inequalities ! What wrongs ! What abomi- 
nations ! What injustices! How many wicked 
men who are not punished ! How many good 
men are not sufficiently rewarded ! Right is on 
the scaffold, wrong is on the throne, and there is 
no explanation for this world unless within the 
shadow there is a world in which wrong shall 
be righted and justice be done. This world is 
unendurable unless there is another. The whole 
world is groaning and travailing in pain : what 
does it all mean ? These tragedies — can we endure 
them ? These enigmas — how shall we bear them ? 
The world is filled with things that are dismal and 
dark ; but pull aside the curtain, and when the 
light from another world falls on this one all our 
pains and troubles flash like jewels in the sun. 
The conscience in man stands up and says : The 
Judge of all the world must do right. How can 
he do right with all his creatures unless he has 
more time ? 

Science has also lighted certain candles in whose 
light to-day many men are walking. One of the 
most stupendous discoveries of the nineteenth cen- 
tury is the discovery of the fact that matter cannot 
be destroyed. You can change its form, but not 
its weight. You may alter its shape, but not its 
substance. It cannot be washed away or burned 
up or blotted out. Nor is it possible, says science, 
to destroy energy. Force may be transformed, but 
not obliterated. Science has added to her creed 



336 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

the doctrine of the conservation of energy. If 
it be true, then, that force cannot be destroyed, 
we are allowed to hope that that peculiar form of 
force known as personality will survive the experi- 
ence of death. If what we call the natural forces 
of the world cannot be annihilated, why should we 
not expect that affections and aspirations and the 
power of thinking should be equally indestructible ? 
Science has taught us that there is such a thing 
as the survival of the fittest. In her study of 
the processes by which the world has climbed to 
its present level, she has discovered that certain 
organisms find themselves unequal to the race of 
life and fall away, while other organisms persist 
and conquer. The weak and the unfit perish ; the 
strong survive. Now of all the beliefs which have 
gone to make up man's spiritual possessions, not 
one has shown a greater degree of vitality and a 
greater power to resist the disintegrating influ- 
ences of all changes in environment than belief 
in the soul's immortality. Many a fancy and 
many a notion has been sloughed off and cast as 
rubbish to the void, but the conviction that if a 
man die he shall live again has persisted in spite 
of all opposing forces ; and the very fact that after 
so long a lapse of time it is still vigorous and buoy- 
ant, suggests that this is a belief which is fit to 
live. Evidently it is one of the things which the 
Creator of the universe desires to grow. If the 
Creator of the universe is good, it is difficult to 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 337 

believe that belief in immortality is a delusion. 
The mind revolts from the idea that a lie is fit. 

Science has also familiarized us with the fact 
that progress is only possible by the constant 
adaptation of faculty to environment. Without 
light there would be no eye. Without sound 
vibrations there would be no ear. Without water 
there would be no fin. Without air there would 
be no wing. Whenever we find a faculty, we dis- 
cover in the environment something to which that 
faculty responds. There is always a correspond- 
ence between the internal life and the external 
reality. This is true throughout the entire animal 
creation up to man. In man we find things which 
do not exist in animals below his rank. There is 
in him the thought of immortality, and the craving 
for it, and the expanding conviction of it. The 
question now arises, Is there any external reality 
to which this internal hope corresponds ? Among 
animals progress is conditioned on the adjustment 
of faculty to environment. How is it with prog- 
ress among men? As man rises in the scale of 
being his expectation of life eternal becomes in- 
creasingly strong. Does this internal condition 
correspond to any unseen reality ? If not, then 
one-half the universe is made on one plan and the 
other half is made on a different plan : there is 
adaptation of faculty to environment among ani- 
mals and no such adaptation among men. 

Science has persuaded us all to believe in prog- 



338 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

ress. It is her constant contention that through 
the ages there runs an unfolding purpose. She has 
pointed out the fact that everything passes from 
lower to higher, from less to more, from simple to 
more complex. And having gotten us into this 
forward looking habit, it is well-nigh impossible for 
us to bound our vision with the tomb. With the 
apostle we cry out, "Now are we the sons of God, 
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but 
we know that when he shall appear, we shall be 
like him, for we shall see him as he is." Conser- 
vation of energy, the survival of the fittest, the 
adaptation of faculty to environment, the principle 
of progression, — these are the four candles which 
science has lighted for the comfort and strength- 
ening of men. 

Thus far we have spoken of candles only. Let 
us now think of the sun. These candles would all 
be burning even though there were no Jesus Christ. 
But on Easter Sunday we can dispense with the 
candles and revel in the full light of the risen sun. 
Immortality has always been believed in and always 
hoped for; but it was Jesus of Nazareth who brought 
life and immortality to light. Jesus never argued 
with men concerning life beyond the grave, he took 
it for granted. God is not the God of the dead, 
but of the living — that to him was axiomatic. In 
the presence of death he spoke with accents that 
never wavered. If you want to see the difference 
between philosophy and revelation, compare the 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 339 

Phaedo of Plato with the fourteenth chapter of the 
gospel of St. John. Socrates, sitting on the side of 
the bed in his prison cell in Athens, indulges in 
long and abstruse arguments to prove to his dis- 
ciples that the soul will not cease to live at death. 
Listen to Jesus saying : " In my Father's house 
are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for 
you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I 
will come again, and receive you unto myself, that 
where I am there ye may be also." From first to 
last he always spoke in the tone which he used in 
the conversation with Nicodemus, " We speak that 
we do know, we testify that we have seen." But 
his words were no less wonderful than his deeds. 
He confirmed the truth of all which he had said by 
his rising from the grave. He told his disciples 
that on the third day he would rise, and so he did. 
No event of history is more certain than that. 
For no event can stronger evidence be brought than 
can be brought for that. It has evidence of many 
kinds, and evidence which cannot be overturned. 
Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, sums it all up 
in a paragraph as compact as it is convincing. 
Paul assures the Corinthians that he has preached 
to them only that which he has received. He has 
had long talks with Peter and with John, and he 
knows just what has happened. He says that 
Christ appeared first of all to Peter, and later on 
he appeared to the Twelve, and still later to five 
hundred brethren at once, of whom over two hun- 



340 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

dred and fifty were living when the apostle wrote 
his letter. This was an immortal company ; they 
had had an experience which had been given to no 
others. Furthermore, he appeared to James, the 
man who had not believed in him, but who is now 
a believer and the head of the Jerusalem church. 
He appeared again to the Twelve, the official com- 
pany which is the head of the church universal. 
"And last of all," says Paul, "he appeared to me." 
Thus far he has dealt with hearsay, he has been 
willing to stand upon the testimony of others ; but 
now he enters the realm of personal experience. 
Nothing can shake him from his position; nothing 
can overturn the foundation on which he stands. 
The very idea that Christ has not risen is to his 
mind inconceivable, horrible, crushing. His lan- 
guage even yet burns after the winters of nineteen 
hundred years. "If Christ be not risen, then is our 
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, 
and we are found false witnesses of God, because 
we have testified of God that he raised up Christ." 
What terrible consequences follow the denial of 
the resurrection, — the apostles are liars, and all 
Christians are dupes, all preaching and all faith 
are vain. No wonder the apostle goes on to say, 
" If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are 
of all men most pitiable." The supposition that 
Christ has not risen is picked up only to be hurled 
away. 

But a page of one of St. Paul's letters is not 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 341 

the only foundation on which we build. We have 
something more substantial than one man's con- 
viction for a foundation. How does it happen that 
the day of rest has been for centuries on the first day 
of the week ? For centuries it had been on the last 
day. But suddenly the first day of the week has 
a glory which no other day possesses. When Saul 
of Tarsus, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, begins to 
instruct his converts in regard to what they are to 
do on the first day of the week, certainly something 
has happened to bring about so mighty a revolu- 
tion. So great a change must have been wrought 
by some phenomenal event. And what does it 
mean that there is one Sunday of the year more 
glorious than all the others — a Sunday that walks 
like a jewelled queen in the midst of her sister 
Sundays ? Something wonderful must have hap- 
pened on an April Sunday in Palestine that at the 
distance of nineteen hundred years our Easter 
Sunday should still be glorious. The resurrection 
of Jesus left its mark not only in the apostolic 
writings, but in the world's calendar. You may 
burn up the New Testament, but what will you do 
with the calendar ? 

Not only has the calendar been changed, but the 
institutional life of man has undergone a marvellous 
transformation. After the death of Jesus his dis- 
ciples were discouraged and defeated. They were 
a company of nerveless, timid, cowering men. 
There was no song on their lips, nor any light in 



342 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

their faces, nor any fire in their voices ; and yet 
after a few days these men, for some reason, became 
bold as lions, and fairly sprang upon the World. 
They were eloquent as archangels entrancing men's 
hearts. They were mighty as Titans, and turned the 
world upside down. How are we going to account 
for a transformation so marvellous ? These eleven 
men, filled with a burning conviction that Jesus 
had risen, began to organize men around them- 
selves. In a short time the number was a thou- 
sand, and then it became ten thousand, and then 
ten hundred thousand, then ten millions, and then 
a hundred millions, and then two hundred millions, 
and then three hundred millions, then four hundred 
millions! The marvellous process has gone on 
steadily to the present hour, until it requires no 
great stretch of faith to believe that those eleven 
men will some day succeed in winding the entire 
race around themselves into one compact body of 
believing men, each one joining in the glad con- 
fession, " Now is Christ risen ! " The Christian 
church is built upon the fact that Jesus rose from 
the grave. On Easter Sunday we stand upon that 
luminous and sovereign fact and call upon all men 
everywhere to join us in the exultant shout : " O 
death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy 
victory ? " 



XIII 

THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE 
HOLY SPIRIT 



XIII 

THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE 
HOLY SPIRIT 

" Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of 
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the 
gift of the Holy Spirit." — Acts ii : 38. 

Having considered the nature of faith and the 
place of reason, and having glanced at some of the 
problems which the forces of the modern world 
have created, and having considered in a hurried 
manner the general scope and characteristics of 
the Scriptures, the person of Jesus and his mighty 
deeds, the forgiveness of sin and the punishment 
of it, the Christian church and the life everlasting, 
we are now ready to take up the doctrine which may 
be said to be the crown of the teaching of the Chris- 
tian religion, the person and work of the Holy Spirit. 

Probably some of you felt that the climax of our 
thought was reached on Easter Sunday. It seemed 
that the course of sermons reached in our Easter 
meditation its appropriate conclusion. Why was 
not that a good point at which to stop ? Is not 
Easter the great Sunday of the year ? Does it 
not move among its sister Sundays like a jewelled 
and garlanded queen ? And is not the resurrection 

345 



V 



346 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

of Jesus the foundation fact on which the Christian 
church has been built ? And is not the immortality 
of the soul the most august theme of which the 
mind can think ? I do not wonder that some of 
you felt that with the Easter message our study of 
the fundamentals of the Christian religion might 
appropriately come to an end. But the New Testa- 
ment will not let us stop there. All which we have 
thus far studied is only a fragment of the Christian 
religion, and it is a fragment which would not 
have perennial significance if there was nothing 
to complete it. He errs greatly who thinks that 
the Christian religion stops with the resurrection. 
There was a time when the disciples supposed 
that it stopped there. When Jesus passed into the 
cloud which received him from human sight, his 
disciples stood rooted to the ground gazing stead- 
fastly into the heavens into which their Master 
had gone. And while they stood there they re- 
ceived this reprimand from two men robed in 
white, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing 
up into heaven ? this same Jesus which is taken 
from you into heaven shall come again." It was 
not until they returned to the city that they re- 
ceived the completion of the revelation which had 
been promised them. It is not the object of the 
Christian religion to leave men standing gazing 
into heaven. The New Testament will not permit 
it. Visions are entrancing, but they are not the 
thing which is supreme. When Jesus was praying 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 347 

one day high up on a mountain in the presence 
of his disciples, he was transfigured before them. 
The eyes of his disciples were opened so that they 
could see into the world eternal where they beheld 
the forms of Elijah and Moses. Enraptured by 
the sight, Peter said : " Lord, it is good for us to be 
here. If thou wilt, let us make here three taber- 
nacles : one for thee, one for Moses, and one for 
Elijah." But the Master paid no attention to his 
request ; he led his disciples straightway from the 
mountain top down to the plain where there was 
a father in distress and a child sick and a discour- 
aged company of workers brooding over a humili- 
ating defeat. The Christian religion will not allow 
us to stand gazing into heaven, nor will it allow us 
to build our habitation upon a shining mountain 
top ; it persists in thrusting us down upon the dusty 
plain where problems are pressing and burdens are 
hard to bear. 

If that was the method of Jesus, it was also the 
method of Paul. Certainly no man ever read more 
meaning into the resurrection of Jesus than did 
the apostle to the Gentiles. Wherever he went, 
he preached Jesus and the resurrection. To him 
the resurrection was fundamental, without it the 
Christian religion was built on sand. But he never 
permitted himself to stop with the resurrection. 
In his great argument in his first letter to the 
Corinthians he rises from peak to peak, climbing 
grandly up the mountain of his argument until at 



348 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

last with sure feet planted, as we think, upon the 
very summit, he gives forth that exultant shout 
which has rung like music in the world's atmos- 
phere through nineteen centuries: " O death, where 
is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 
And in the presence of the grim monster which 
has trampled beneath his pitiless feet countless 
generations of human beings, this inspired prophet 
of the Lord cries, "Thanks be unto God who 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
Christ." O Paul, that is a good place to stop. 
You have reached the climax. It is impossible 
to go beyond that. Pronounce the benediction 
and let us go. But, no, listen, he is going higher. 
His message is not completed. "Now, concern- 
ing the collection." What collection ? The col- 
lection for the poor people in Jerusalem. Who are 
they ? Jews. To whom is Paul writing ? Gentiles. 
Shall Gentiles give their money to Jerusalem Jews ? 
Ah, Paul, you forget the prejudices and hatreds of a 
thousand years — do you expect money to go from 
Corinth to Jerusalem ? Why should Gentiles make 
sacrifices for Jews? Paul has his answer, It is 
because we are the immortal sons of God destined 
to live with him forever, and therefore while we 
are here upon the earth we must live as brothers, 
bearing one another's burdens, ministering to one 
another in the Lord. 

You have never the complete Christian message 
until you reach the great word "service." Chris- 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 349 

tianity is not a vision or a thought or a dream ; it 
is action, conduct, life. The goal of the Christian 
faith is not theoretical knowledge, but practical 
power. "It is not for you to know the times or 
the seasons, but you shall receive power, after that 
the Holy Spirit has come upon you ; and ye shall 
be witnesses unto me." In that sentence Jesus 
strikes the keynote of all his teaching. He always 
placed doing before knowing, and action before 
information, deeds before visions or notions. 
Listen to him in the Sermon on the Mount saying, 
"Not every one that says . . . many shall say. 11 
How he scorned the hollow words of the lips ! The 
Sermon on the Mount is filled with great principles ; 
but you have forgotten the climax of the sermon if 
you forget that it says this, "Whosoever heareth 
these sayings of mine and doeth them is a wise 
man ; whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and 
doeth them not is a fool." That is the tone of 
Jesus' teaching from first to last. On the very 
last night of his life he is speaking with the same 
accent and the same emphasis. " If ye know these 
things, happy are ye if ye do them. Ye are my 
friends if ye do whatsoever I command you." 

We are to be judged here and everywhere by 
what we do. Those that have done good are going 
to come forth to the resurrection of life, and those 
who have done evil are going to come forth to the 
resurrection of condemnation. In this world hypoc- 
risies and shams and self-confusions and deceits 



350 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

are numerous and easy, but before the judgment bar 
we all shall see things as they are. There will be 
no escape from the awful sentence : " Inasmuch as 
ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren 
ye did it not unto me. Depart." 

The end of life, then, according to Jesus, is not 
a thought, but an action. The supreme thing is 
not information, but conduct. The most urgent 
and critical question which you and I have to face 
is not any question of biblical criticism or Christian 
philosophy, but can a man on Manhattan Island in 
the first decade of the twentieth century live the 
Christ life ? and can a man here and now do 
the work which God would have him do ? All other 
questions sink into insignificance compared with 
this one. Oh, Christian religion, what do you have 
to say? Is it possible for a man at all times and 
in all circumstances to live a life which shall be 
well pleasing to God ? But before the question has 
left our lips, the Christian religion throws back the 
full-toned, jubilant answer, "Yes." And if we ask, 
How is this great thing possible ? she immediately 
replies, " By the power of the Holy Spirit." 

We are dealing, then, this morning with one of 
the most practical of all subjects, and yet it is a 
subject enveloped in the greatest mystery. There 
is no article in the Christian creed which it is 
more difficult to deal with, and concerning which 
more perplexing and unanswerable questions rise 
than just that little article which we repeat so easily, 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 351 

and I fear so thoughtlessly, " I believe in the Holy 
Spirit." Whenever we begin to think about this 
subject, we enter the realm of mystery, and Jesus 
acknowledged all this in his conversation with 
Nicodemus. Before he talked long with the aged 
citizen of Jerusalem, Nicodemus began to use the 
great adverb "how," a word which springs spon- 
taneously to the lips of every man who thinks. 
And Jesus at once informed him that there was no 
answer to his question. Certain things are simply 
because they are. They are not to be philosophized 
about until they have been acted on. A man must 
be born of the Spirit. If you ask the question 
How ? the answer is, He must be born of the 
Spirit. If you say it is a mystery, the answer is, 
You speak truly, but the world is full of mystery. 
Even such a common thing as the wind is a mystery. 
" The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou near- 
est the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it 
cometh and whither it goeth : so is every one that 
is born of the Spirit." 

If you ask how does the Holy Spirit work upon 
the human mind, no satisfactory answer can be 
given. That is the great question which is con- 
stantly coming up to meet us out of the Scriptures, 
How did the Spirit of God act upon the minds of 
the men who wrote the books which have been 
bound up into this great volume which we call the 
Bible ? You say these men were inspired. What 
is inspiration ? Can it be defined ? No. The 



352 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

Christian church has never in all her history dared 
to write down a definition of inspiration. Individ- 
uals have been trying to do it and their attempts 
can be numbered by the thousands ; but not a 
single definition yet framed has met with universal 
approbation. Even the Roman Catholic church, 
the church which is exceedingly bold in writing 
down the things which must be accepted, has never 
yet ventured upon the hazardous task of formulat- 
ing a definition of inspiration. 

There are at least three different theories enter- 
tained by Catholic theologians, and none of the 
theories has been officially accepted or condemned 
by the Bishop of Rome. And what is true of 
Catholicism is equally true of Protestantism. Dif- 
ferent men have different conceptions of what is 
involved in inspiration; but no Protestant church 
has ever yet attempted to give a definition of it to 
which all her members must subscribe. We are 
all willing to say with Paul that every Scripture 
inspired of God is profitable for doctrine, for re- 
proof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
ness ; and we all say with Peter that holy men of 
God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. 
But in what way was the Holy Spirit operative? 
and how far did the moving impulse of the Holy 
Spirit extend ? and how much of the bias and the 
limitation of the individual was carried into the 
substance of the message ? 

These are the problems upon which Christian 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 353 

thinkers have never yet been able to agree. We 
believe that somehow the Eternal Spirit worked 
upon the minds of the prophets and apostles ; but 
how this was done we cannot say. Our own Chris- 
tian life involves a mystery which baffles us. When 
does the Holy Spirit come to us? Many a Chris- 
tian has asked that question in great distress. One 
man says : " He has come to me. I know the hour, 
the very minute when he entered into my soul. 
My heart burned within me, old things passed away, 
and lo ! all things became new." The man who 
stands by his side listening to this testimony says 
to himself: "This experience has never yet been 
mine. I think I have the Spirit ; but yet I know 
not when he came. I cannot point out any shining 
hour in all the calendar of my life in which the 
king of glory entered." 

Men are not only perplexed in regard to the com- 
ing of the Spirit, but they are not able to tell how 
the Spirit works. How mysterious the whole prob- 
lem is ! This Holy Spirit is in us working in us to 
do God's good pleasure ; but yet how much of our 
life is due to him, and how much is really ours ? 
These motives by which we are moved, how many of 
them come from heaven, and how many of them 
come from the earth ? These impulses that drive 
us in a certain direction, how many of them are the 
creation of the Spirit, and how many of them are 
the creation of our own flesh ? How can any man 
tell how fully God has taken possession of his life ? 

2A 



/ 



354 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

All this is a great mystery; but it is the same 
sort of mystery which we face every time we think 
about the action of the mind upon the body. How 
does the human spirit act upon the body ? No- 
body knows. Science has no lancet, no micro- 
scope, no X-rays, with which to reach to the roots of 
that deep mystery. Science has within a century 
found out a thousand different things, but when 
it comes to stating how the mind acts upon the 
body, the most learned scientist of the twentieth 
century is as ignorant as was the primeval man 
who built his hut amid the melting icebergs in the 
age of ice. And how does one mind influence 
another mind ? We speak familiarly of influence 
— we influence others' and are in turn influenced 
by them ; but what is this something which we call 
influence ? and how can one mind be moulded and 
turned by another ? If we cannot answer a ques- 
tion like this, why should we be surprised that we 
cannot follow the processes of God's activity when 
he is at work in the heart of man ? If we cannot 
explain the action of the human mind, much less 
may we hope to be able to explain the mind of God. 

But while we move amid great mysteries there 
are certain things clear as the sun at noon. In 
this matter as in all others, God gives us all the 
light we need. He does not answer all the ques- 
tions we may choose to ask; but he gives us light 
by which it is possible for us to walk. He tells us 
it is not for us to know the times and seasons, but 



N 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 355 

assures us that we shall receive power. The 
Christian religion makes the declaration positive 
and unmistakable that there is such a person as 
the Holy Spirit. He is as real and as personal 
and as mighty as Christ is, as, God the Father is. 
He assisted Jesus in all his earthly work. John 
the Baptist in comparing the Messiah with himself 
declared that whereas he, the Baptist, could bap- 
tize with water, the Messiah should baptize with 
fire and with the Holy Spirit. In the training of 
the Twelve, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit repeat- 
edly ; but it is not until the very close of his earthly 
life that he declares fully what has been in his 
heart. He has had many things to say to these 
twelve men, but they have not been able to bear 
them until the shadows are so thick around them 
that their hearts are receptive to this high spirit- 
ual teaching. 

St. John in his gospel tells the gist of the 
conversation on that never-to-be-forgotten night. 
According to John, the great subject was the 
Holy Spirit. It was an awful evening, and yet 
it was a glorious evening, because all the room 
was lighted up by one splendid promise, "I will 
pray the Father, and he shall give you another 
comforter." The word "comforter" is not a good 
translation of the Greek. Comforter in our lan- 
guage means soother. Jesus is not talking about 
a soother ; he is talking about an advocate, a pro- 
tector, a defender, a friend in need. He himself 



356 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

has been all this to these twelve men. He has 
stood by them, protecting them from the assaults 
of their enemies, answering the perplexing ques- 
tions which have been asked, solving the intricate 
problems which have been presented, throwing 
light upon the path when it was dark, discomfit- 
ing plotting Scribes and Pharisees by a wisdom 
which was divine. And now their protector and 
friend is going away, and these twelve men look at 
him out of hopeless eyes. 

Their memories are treacherous, and they fear 
' that they may forget the golden words which he 
has spoken ; but he assures them that there is no 
danger of this because the Holy Spirit will call to 
their remembrance everything which he has told 
them. They realize their ignorance, they are only 
poor, bewildered fishermen and peasants ; what are 
they to do in a world ruled by Rabbis seated on 
their thrones, and how are they to find out what 
is the truth in a world so filled with conflicting 
\ voices and delusions ? But he takes away their 
fear by saying, "The Holy Spirit will guide you 
into all truth." 

Their hearts sink within them when they think 
about their weakness. In imagination the great 
bold world rises before them, bitter, stubborn, 
unconquerable. How can these men make the 
slightest impression upon the mind of their age ? 
What can they hope to do either with the scholars 
or with the crowd ? Is not the whole world hos- 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 357 

tile to the teaching which Jesus has given ? And 
how will it be possible for men so weak as they are 
to bear the burden which the Master is rolling on 
them ? But here again Jesus assures them that 
their work is not hopeless because the Holy Spirit 
will go before them and prepare the way ; Jesus' 
departure instead of weakening them will really 
give them added strength, " It is expedient for 
you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Com- 
forter will not come unto you ; but if I go away, I 
will send him to you. And he, when he is come, 
will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness 
and of judgment." 

An unutterable sense of loneliness fills their 
hearts when they think of the desolate days which 
lie ahead of them. He has been their companion, 
comrade, friend — and he is going away. They 
cannot follow him, they must stay and labor and 
suffer and struggle. All the future is midnight to 
their disconsolate eyes. But here again Jesus 
comes to the rescue saying : " I will pray the Father, 
and he shall give you another Comforter, that he 
may abide with you forever. He dwelleth with you, 
and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfort- 
less : I will come to you." 

This is the great promise which the Christian 
religion makes to men. When Simon Peter on the 
day of Pentecost declared to the assembled crowd 
the reward which God offered to all who became 
the disciples of his Son, he spoke thus : " Repent, 



U 



358 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

and be baptized every one of you in the name of 
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall 
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." 

Was the promise of Jesus kept ? It was. How 
do we know it? The Christian church proves it. 
Had there been no Pentecost, there would have 
been no Christian church. Men sometimes say that 
there are two great days in the Christian year, — 
Christmas and Easter, — the day that commemo- 
rates the birth of Jesus, and the day that commemo- 
rates his rising from the tomb. Those are great 
days, to be sure ; but they do not exhaust the list, 
there is another day as great as either, and without 
which the first two would amount to little. There 
are three great days in the Christian year: Christ- 
mas, Easter, Whitsunday, and we are not true to 
our faith when we allow Whitsunday to fall into 
the background. Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday 
after Easter, was called Whitsunday or White 
Sunday, because for centuries professing Christians 
dressed in white on that great day to commemo- 
rate the coming of the Holy Spirit. If you have 
neglected Whitsunday and given it a subordinate 
place in your mind and heart, crown it at once and 
keep it on its throne. It has equal rank with 
Christmas and Easter. The three together are the 
three throned days of the Christian year. 

It was Pentecost that made the Christian church 
possible. Neither Christmas nor Easter would 
have any glory if it were not for Whitsunday. Had 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 359 

the Holy Spirit never come, the Christian church 
would never have conquered, — nay, the Christian 
church would never have been born. We are 
always giving a fictitious value to knowledge. In 
our ignorance we sometimes imagine that the Chris- 
tian religion owes its power to a certain set of ideas. 
We speak of the Golden Rule, and the Beatitudes, 
and the Lord's Prayer, and the Fatherhood of God 
as though these were mighty forces which would 
account for Christian growth and progress. But 
when we study history, we discover that ideas are 
comparatively impotent in the great work of chang- 
ing the character of the human heart. 

If great ideas are sufficient to make men Chris- 
tians, how does it happen that the disciples were so 
joyless and so impotent until the day of Pentecost ? 
On the very last night of Jesus' earthly life we see 
them quarrelling in taking their places at the little 
table in the upper room. John seized a place on 
one side of the Master, and Judas a place on the 
other, and the result was that Matthew and Bar- 
tholomew and the rest of them were nettled. There 
was so much ugliness in their hearts that it was 
impossible to proceed with the feast. And yet 
these men had listened to all the lovely teaching of 
Jesus concerning brotherly love, and forbearance, 
and longsuffering, and humility. Again and again 
they had been taught that they must find greatness 
in their willingness to serve one another. What 
does knowledge amount to if there is an evil spirit 



360 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

in the heart ? And think what Peter did still later 
on that awful night. He lied not simply once, but 
twice and thrice, and covered his last lie with an 
oath. Simon Peter had heard the Sermon on the 
Mount, and had been taught the Lord's Prayer 
from the lips of the Lord himself, and had heard 
all the parables, and had seen all the miracles, and 
had been present on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
and had drunk in all the teaching of the upper 
room — and yet this man, with all this knowledge, 
lies and swears ! 

Ideas will never save a man. Nor did the resur- 
rection change the disposition or temper of these 
men. Even after the resurrection they were timid. 
They hid themselves away in a room, locked the 
doors and bolted them. Every creak alarmed them, 
every footfall made them afraid, joy is a stranger to 
their hearts, courage they have not yet learned. 
But on the day of Pentecost something happens. 
Somebody comes. The Holy Spirit baptizes them 
with a new power. Instantly the doors are thrown 
open, and Simon Peter stands up in the presence 
of a great crowd defending himself and the men 
who stand behind him, and explaining the cause 
of their tumultuous joy. 

What has wrought this wondrous change ? This 
man who lied will never lie again, this man who 
defiled his lips with an oath will never swear again. 
This man who has been weak as water is now at 
last, even as the Master promised — rock. Peter's 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 36 1 

explanation is that the Holy Spirit has come. The 
day which the prophets longed for, and which one 
of the keenest-eyed of them foresaw, has at last 
arrived. Christ's promise has been kept. Although 
wicked men have crucified him, he has ascended to 
the right hand of God, and a new Spirit has de- 
scended into the hearts of men. The history of 
the Christian church then begins with the day of 
Pentecost. There is no church without fire and 
power, there is neither fire nor power without the 
Holy Spirit. 

It is only by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit f 
that the Christian life becomes possible to any one 
of us. We are not made Christians by ideas, but 
by the Spirit who dwells within us. It is amazing 
how little our knowledge amounts to in curbing our 
propensities or in strengthening us for noble deeds. 
Have you ever compared your knowledge with your 
conduct ? What a contrast ! Your knowledge is a 
mountain, your conduct is a mole hill. Think of 
our advantages. Most of us were born in Christian 
families, we were rocked when children to the music 
of Christian hymns, we were loved and caressed 
and taught by Christian teachers. All our life long 
we have been bathed in the influences of the Chris- 
tian church, listening to its sermons and hymns 
and prayers. We have had the support and the 
encouragement of Christian acquaintances and 
friends, the inspiration and instruction of Christian 
books. And yet how easy it is sometimes for us to 



362 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

think and feel and say unchristian things. There 
are days when it seems as if the Holy Spirit leaves 
us, and the evil spirit enters in ; and so long as the 
evil spirit has dominion over us all our good knowl- 
edge amounts to nothing. It lies unused in one cor- 
ner of the soul. We, like Simon Peter and the other 
apostles, are hopeless until the Holy Spirit comes. 
Ever since the day of Pentecost the Christian 
church has been living under the dispensation of 
the Holy Spirit. The book of the Acts is the first 
volume of church history ever published, and if you 
will glance its pages through, you will see that the 
world in which you are living is different from that 
which is pictured for us in the gospels. In each 
of the gospels Jesus is supreme, he is everywhere. 
He is teacher, guide, king ; but in the book of the 
Acts Jesus sinks into the background. His place 
is taken by the other comforter whom the Father 
has sent into the world. Simon Peter, looking into 
the face of the first liar who has been discovered 
in the Jerusalem church, says, " Ananias, why has 
Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit ? " 
He does not say, God the Father, or Jesus ; he says, 
Holy Spirit, because it is in the power of the Holy 
Spirit that the church is living its life, and doing 
its work. Stephen, in his great defence before the 
crowd which is thirsting for his blood, cries out at 
the close of his address, " Ye stiff-necked and un- 
circumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist 
the Holy Spirit." 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 363 

When the work of the church expands to the 
point where other officials are demanded, the 
apostles give directions that men should be chosen 
who are full of the Holy Spirit. That is the 
one prime qualification for office-bearing in the 
Christian church. Neither pastor, nor deacon, 
nor Sunday-school teacher is fit to hold a place in 
the church of God unless he has received the 
baptism. It is the Holy Spirit who distributes 
gifts among men, and it is he who gives men posi- 
tion in the church. Paul in saying good-by to the 
Ephesian elders says, "Take heed therefore unto 
yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the 
Holy Spirit hath made you overseers." And 
throughout the book of the Acts we see the church 
being guided by the Holy Spirit. Peter has in 
him all the conservatism and the prejudices of the 
Hebrew nation. He is willing that the Gentiles 
shall become Christians, but he feels that they 
ought first to become Jews. One day he has a 
dream, and from this dream he is aroused by the 
knocking of three men at the door. While he sits 
bewildered, wondering what he ought to do, the 
Spirit says to the hesitating apostle : " Behold, three 
men seek thee. Arise and go, for I have sent 
them." Obedient to the instructions, Peter goes 
to Caesarea, sees the devout centurion of the Italian 
band, preaches to him and his companions, and 
even while he speaks the Holy Spirit falls on all 
, of them who hear the word. 



364 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

The Christian church took its first great step for- 
ward under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit. 
In the course of time it was necessary for the church 
to move out from Asia into Europe, and here again 
the Holy Spirit is leader. The church at Antioch, 
filled with enthusiasm, dreamed of carrying the 
Christian message into regions whither it had not 
yet gone. And while the leaders of the church 
were fasting, the Holy Spirit said, " Separate me, 
Barnabas, and Saul for the work whereunto I have 
called them." Paul always felt in all his labors 
that he was being directed by the Holy Spirit. If 
he was not permitted to enter into a certain prov- 
ince to preach there, it was because he was for- 
bidden by the Holy Spirit. If other doors were 
open, it was because the Holy Spirit was inviting 
him to pass that way. The entire New Testament 
outside of the gospels unites in saying, " He that 
hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to 
the churches." The church of Jesus Christ is 
under the guidance and in the keeping and under 
the instruction of the Holy Spirit. 

This is a truth, however, which we oftentimes 
forget. We have a fatal tendency to look back- 
ward. Looking backward is one of our most dan- 
gerous and debilitating sins. Men sometimes say : 
" Oh, for the days of Whitefield ! Oh, for the days 
of Wesley ! Oh, for the days of Luther ! Oh, for 
the days of the apostles ! " What we ought to say 
is : Oh, for the belief that the same Jesus who 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 365 

ascended into the heavens has come back again, 
and that he is here in his invisible representative, 
the Holy Spirit, as truly as he was in the city of 
Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost ! In one of Paul's 
missionary journeys he came to Ephesus, where he 
found certain disciples. They seemed to be good 
men, but before Paul had been with them long he 
observed that they lacked something. " Have you 
received the Holy Spirit since you believed ? " he 
said, and the reply was : " We have not so much as 
heard whether there be any Holy Spirit." The de- 
scendants of these Ephesian disciples are to be found 
in all parts of our modern Christendom. There are 
men who have a sincere admiration for Jesus, tak- 
ing a genuine delight in the study of his life, 
endeavoring in every possible way to master the 
geography and the customs of his times, who lose 
out of the Christian religion its joy and power 
because they have never grasped the truth that 
Christ is living, and that he reigns to-day in the 
hearts of men through the power of the Holy 
Spirit. 

What doctrine is more needed in our time than 
just the doctrine which is the subject of our study 
this morning ? We are living in an age charac- 
terized by mighty changes. Old conceptions are 
passing away, in medicine, in political economy, in 
philosophy, in every department of human thought. 
Some of the conceptions of the old theology are 
disappearing. Some of the old conceptions of the 



366 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

Scriptures are passing. And many Christians are 
distressed. It is no light matter for a man to sur- 
render something which has been a part of his 
intellectual life for years, and the experience be- 
comes all the more distressing if the thing to be 
parted with has been involved in his own spiritual 
development. 

Have you ever pictured to yourselves the con- 
sternation and dismay of the poor Hebrews of 
the first century who were asked to embrace the 
Christian faith ? There is one entire book in the 
New Testament which is from first to last a hook 
of consolation written for the relief of men who 
found their ancient beliefs gradually slipping from 
their grasp. The Hebrews had for centuries been 
trained to reverence the entire temple, its wor- 
ship, its architecture, its altar, its candlesticks, its 
bleeding victims, its prayers, its fasts. Every 
feature of the whole system had special signifi- 
cance and sanctity. And when the apostle stepped 
in announcing that all this had been done away 
with, many a sincere heart was filled with anguish 
unutterable. And the writer of the epistle to 
the Hebrews takes up the difficult task of showing 
these perplexed and sorrow-stricken people that 
while many of their old conceptions would have to 
be surrendered, yet nothing that was really vital and 
essential would ever pass away. Things that were 
shaken would inevitably pass away in order that 
the things which cannot be shaken might remain. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 367 

So it is in our day. There are men and women 
who are distressed because they are neither able to 
hold the old conceptions as they once held them, 
nor are they able to accept the new. What shall 
such people do? Believe in the Holy Spirit. If 
men undermine your confidence in one set of 
interpretations and conceptions, throw yourself 
back on God. However the opinions of men may 
change, God never changes. He is the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever. Bewildered as you 
may be by the thousand conflicting voices which 
to-day fill the air with din, believe in the Spirit of 
Truth, give yourself up to him, and he will guide 
you into all the truth which it is needful for you 
to know. 

And what a work we have to do ! The world 
has always been materialistic and sordid, and such 
it is to-day. There is widespread corruption in 
society, in politics, in the church. Well might a 
man be despondent and hopeless if he could not 
say : " I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of 
Holiness, who is able to cleanse as with fire." They 
tell us there are many dangers just ahead of us. 
Many men are timid. Some of them are almost in 
hysterics. Writers tell us of the Yellow peril, and 
the Slavic peril, and the Black peril, and if one 
should listen to what all the croaking prophets are 
saying, life would be dark indeed. There are 
those who tell us of awful things which are sure to 
overtake us before another generation has lived 



368 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

out its life. Certain men in the financial world 
have gotten such enormous wealth into their con- 
trol that they have the world practically at their 
mercy. How their sovereignty can be curbed or 
broken, no one is able to say. And there are 
other men, representatives of labor, who are slowly 
but surely gathering into their hands power as 
great as that possessed by the kings of gold. And 
when the giants of capital and the giants of labor 
meet at last, as meet they must, there will be a con- 
flict such as the world has never yet seen. So men 
are saying. If a man should fix his eyes steadfastly 
upon certain tendencies, if he should listen to noth- 
ing but the voices of greed and of hate, well might 
he despair of his country, well might he lose hope 
for the future. But let a man say, " I believe in the 
Holy Spirit," and none of these things will move 
him. 

Why should any man be despondent who be- 
lieves that the Spirit of God is working on the 
hearts of men ? He has access to the hearts of the 
money kings and to the hearts of the labor kings. 
He has access to the hearts of the good and to the 
hearts of the bad, to the hearts of the strong and 
to the hearts of the weak. Believing in his sov- 
ereign power, let us work in the present with a 
song in our hearts, and let us face the future with 
a courage undaunted. "God's in his heaven, all's 
right with the world." 

According to the Christian religion the Holy 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 369 

Spirit is a gift. A gift is worthless unless it is 
accepted. How can we accept this offered gift ? 
That is a vital question. How can we secure this 
promised strengthener ? The answer is, By prayer. 
The Master says, " Ask, seek, knock." Those 
who ask receive, those who seek find, to them 
who knock it is opened. " If ye being evil, know 
how to give good gifts to your children, how much 
more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy 
Spirit to them that ask him." There must be 
perseverance in prayer ; a man must pray always 
and not faint. He must wait on the Lord. In a 
feverish and impatient age we need to refresh our 
memory by reading again the things which are 
promised to those who are willing to wait. A 
prayer is not availing unless it is offered in the 
name of Jesus. This being interpreted means the 
spirit of Jesus. 

It is only when we pray as he prayed that we 
can be sure of acceptance with God. He prayed 
with submission. He surrendered himself com- 
pletely. He emptied himself, abandoning his own 
wishes and desires, throwing himself entirely upon 
the Father. And so must we. The first word of 
Peter's message to us is Repent. We must cast 
away our sin. We must give ourselves completely 
to God. And in our praying we must consecrate 
ourselves to his service. " Lo, I come to do thy 
will, O God." So the Master said, and so must 
say all his disciples. 

2B 



370 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

And the prayer must be the prayer of faith. The 
thing for whose performance we ask for sufficient 
strength must be attempted forthwith, and with 
exultant confidence. Whatsoever the Master says, 
we must do. Even if he commands us what is ap- 
parently impossible, we must nevertheless attempt 
it. If he says, " Give ye the multitude to eat," and 
we have nothing more than five barley loaves and 
two small fishes, we must at once proceed to carry 
out his commandment. Would you receive the 
gift of the Holy Spirit, then desire that in you the 
Father's promise may be at once fulfilled. Begin 
to live a nobler life to-day. Begin to pray as you 
have never prayed before. To-day give yourself 
up with a submission more complete, and begin to 
dream larger things which it is possible for you to 
do for the Christian church. Repent, and be bap- 
tized into the name of Jesus, and you shall receive 
the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

"Receive ye the gift of the Holy Spirit." This 
is the goal toward which we have been moving from 
the beginning. This is the climax of all gospel 
preaching. Every preacher when he is at his high- 
est repeats the words of Simon Peter on the day of 
Pentecost, " Be baptized into the name of Jesus 
Christ, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
Spirit." My purpose has not been to furnish 
you with new ideas and interpretations which you 
might criticise, compare one with the other, or dis- 
cuss. All the preaching has been in vain unless 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 371 

some soul has been led to cry out, " O Lord God 
Almighty, give me the illumination and power and 
joy of the Holy Spirit." 

It is not enough for ministers to instruct men 
in regard to their duty. A man may know his 
duty and still not do it. He certainly will not do 
it unless he has received the Holy Spirit. Jesus 
did not do the things which the evangelists report 
that he did because it was his duty to do them. 
He did not turn his back on Nazareth and heal 
and work and teach and suffer and bleed and die 
because by careful thinking he had come to the 
conclusion that it was his duty to do all this. 
Jesus did what he did because the Spirit descended 
upon him and abode upon him. The Strengthener 
was given unto him without measure. The church 
is always impotent if composed of men who do 
only what they think they ought to do. As well 
might I say to Cleopatra's Needle, u O ancient 
obelisk, step down from off your granite pedestal, 
and do the thing which I command you ! " expect- 
ing it to heed my word, as to say to New York 
men, Do this duty or that, expecting them to do 
it, unless God has first baptized them with the 
Holy Spirit. It is not until God is in a man that 
a man is ready to do what God would have him do. 

We are not truly Christians, then, unless we 
have the Holy Spirit. The Christian life must be 
different from all other life. If a Christian man 
is not different from a man who is not a Christian, 



f yjnf7 



372 THE HOLY SPIRIT [^ 3 

then his Christianity is spurious and a sham. A 
man who is baptized into the Spirit of the Lord 
has a tone to his life, and carries an atmosphere 
with him which compel men to say : That man is 
a Christian. Without the Holy Spirit it is im- 
possible to do any of the great things which the 
New Testament wants done. "No man," says 
Paul, " can say that Christ is Lord except in the 
Holy Spirit." Nor is it possible for men to pray 
unless assisted by this same Holy Spirit. Nor is 
it possible for us to bear witness to the power and 
goodness of Christ unless we have tarried in Jeru- 
salem until Pentecost has come. It is in the 
power of the Holy Spirit that we come off more 
than conquerors. It is only when we have received 
the other Strengthener that we are able to love 
and keep on loving, to work and keep on working, 
to hope and keep on hoping to the end of the day. 
Have you received the gift of the Holy Spirit ? 
If not, then let me exhort you in the words of 
Peter, " Repent ye, and be baptized every one of 
you into the name of Jesus Christ unto the re- 
mission of your sins ; and ye shall receive the gift 
of the Holy Spirit." 



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